


An Open Window

by hal_incandenza



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - His Dark Materials, Crossover, Enemies to Research Partners to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Multiverse, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-04-26 23:02:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 60,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14412381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hal_incandenza/pseuds/hal_incandenza
Summary: One day, the director of Oxford's tiny Dark Matter Research Unit receives a strange visitor. What follows will send him on an implausible journey to another world, an extraordinary research project, and a singular relationship.





	1. The Cave of Consciousness

**Author's Note:**

> This is a PR/HDM crossover, but it's not an everything-is-the-same-but-with-dæmons fic—instead, Hermann and Newt are filling Dr. Mary Malone's role. I've tried to make the exposition as clear as possible, so if you haven't read the books or if it's been a while, it's all laid out. This is a narrative of investigation and discovery. You only have to know as much as Hermann does—and he knows nothing yet. 
> 
> When the story starts, Lyra has just entered "our" universe and is trying to find out more about Dust. Pan is her dæmon, but he is staying hidden because dæmons are not part of this universe. The first chapter follows Mary's scenes from _The Subtle Knife_ pretty closely, but what follows will be different.
> 
> And of course, this fic is dedicated to my dear friend and enthusiastic beta Haley, even though they don't remember a thing from HDM. Don't worry bro, you can get it out of my brain in the drift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “All the immense  
> images in me—the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,  
> cities, towers, and bridges, and un-  
> suspected turns in the path,  
> and those powerful lands that were once  
> pulsing with the life of the gods—  
> all rise within me to mean  
> you, who forever elude me. 
> 
> You, Beloved, who are all  
> the gardens I have ever gazed at,  
> longing. An open window  
> in a country house—, and you almost  
> stepped out, pensive, to meet me. Streets that I chanced  
> Upon,—  
> you had just walked down them and vanished.  
> And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors  
> were still dizzy with your presence and, startled, gave back  
> my too-sudden image. Who knows? Perhaps the same  
> bird echoed through both of us  
> yesterday, separate, in the evening... ”  
> ― Rainer Maria Rilke

_Do not lie to the scholar._

In a corner of Oxford, shabby and overlooked—perhaps intentionally, like a gaze averted from something embarrassing or disquieting—the Dark Matter Research Unit was tucked away. The unit was in peril. Dr. Gottlieb had set off down this rabbit hole almost ten years ago, plunging further and further until he hit the bottom. Which was, it seemed, here, today. There was farther to dig, he knew there was, but not without a shovel. They were not going to renew funding for the Dark Matter Research Unit.

It was not completely unexpected, but the news today had thrown Dr. Gottlieb into a sort of agitated denial. Well so what if his research partner was off in Geneva, giving his paper, probably getting a better job. That was fine. That was his choice. He would stay, until he had tried every possible avenue. They would not stop this project. Not when—

There was a knock at the door.

Dr. Gottlieb collected himself. “Come in,” he said.

Lyra pushed open the door and stepped into a small, barely-ordered room. File cabinets loomed like canyon walls, with stacks of papers teetering in between and on top. Three of the walls were greenish blackboards, one windows, and the blackboards were covered with chalk scribbles. Pan stirred in her pocket, sharing her curiosity. She peered further down the ravine and saw a doorway, leading to a smaller room of wires and anbaric equipment.

Her scholar was hunched on a hard-backed chair in front of an oddly empty desk. He had a look of dogged weariness that struck an immediately familiar chord— _this_ was a Scholar like those she grew up with, like those at Jordan. Lyra straightened up, at ease.

The only thing on his desk was a glass box with wires and buttons—he tapped a button and the glass went dark.

“Who are you?” he said.

She remembered what the alethiometer had said. _Do not lie to the Scholar._ “Lyra Silvertongue,” she said. “What’s your name?”

He frowned. He was in his thirties, with long, thin limbs and a severe, squinting face. He wore a white coat open over a green sweater and neatly buttoned shirt. His glasses hung on a cord. Lyra noticed a cane leaning next to his desk.

He looked narrowly at her. “You are my second surprise visitor today. I’m Dr. Hermann Gottlieb." He spoke with an English accent, but it had a foreign edge. "What are you here for?”

Lyra squared her shoulders. “I want you to tell me about Dust.”

“Dust? What kind of dust?”

“You might not call it that. It's elementary particles. In my world the Scholars call it Rusakov Particles, but normally they call it Dust.” She stumbled over her words, trying to get everything out as fast as possible. “They don't show up easily, but they come out of space and fix on people. Not children so much, though. Mostly on grownups. And something I only found out today—I was in that museum down the road and I found they only fix on certain skulls, the ones with holes in their—”

Dr. Gottlieb held up his hands. “Stop, stop. Elementary particles? Elementary particles do not behave this way. Skulls? What do these have to do with particles?”

“I would tell if you wouldn’t interrupt me,” the girl said severely. “I was looking at the skulls in the museum, and some had holes. Trepanning, they said it was called. Those ones had lots more Dust. Particles. How long ago was the Bronze Age?”

“Around five thousand years ago,” said Dr. Gottlieb suspiciously. “Why?”

“Well then the museum got their labels wrong,” said Lyra with superiority. “The skull with two holes is thirty-three thousand years old.”

Dr. Gottlieb’s frown was getting deeper with every word she said, and now he threw up his hands. “Alright then, who sent you?”

“Sent me?” 

“Yes, you, surely this is a joke or a trick, then,” Dr. Gottlieb said angrily. “Where do you come from?”

“I’m not tricking or joking, sir,” Lyra said, trying not to get angry herself. Hadn’t she been as honest as she could?

“Who are you? How do you know this? Where did you come from?”

Lyra mastered her frustration. Scholars were roundabout; they could understand a lie better than a truth, sometimes. But she had to be truthful.

“I come from another world,” she said. “In my world, there’s an Oxford just like this, which is where I grew up, only—”

“Another _what?_ ” said Dr. Gottlieb.

“Another... place,” Lyra said, more carefully.

His eyes narrowed further. He seemed to see this line of inquiry would get him nowhere. So he only said, “I see. And what have you come to... this Oxford for?”

“To find out about Dust,” she said with agitation. “The Church in my world, they hate Dust, they want to destroy it, but they’re so evil and cruel I know that must mean Dust is good, only I don’t know what it is or what it wants or how to stop them yet, and I, I...!” She stamped her foot. “It’s all going wrong! We don’t know what we’re doing, and...”

For the first time Dr. Gottlieb looked not suspicious, but concerned. Apparently her distress was more convincing than her honesty. “Please, calm down. Lyra, was it? There’s no need to get worked up.”

She folded her arms, clutching herself. Lyra was not sure how she liked this skeptical scholar.

He got to his feet. “I’m going to make some coffee,” he said. “You’ll have some?”

Lyra nodded. He took his cane and crossed towards the window, disappearing behind some stacks.

“If I was the second unexpected thing, what was the first?” Lyra asked, hearing the sounds of water and clink of cups.

“Funding cut,” said Dr. Gottlieb’s voice curtly. There was a jingle of a spoon falling on the floor and a frustrated noise. “We are applying for a renewal and one of our backers withdrew his support. Not so unexpected as an otherwordly visitor, I suppose,” he added, in a tone that conveyed strong doubt about her.

He reappeared with two mugs and asked her to sit. He went on standing, still holding the mugs.

“So what’s dark matter?” she asked. “That’s what it says on your door, right?”

“How much do you know about physics?”

“Some,” she said vaguely.

“My research team is looking for dark matter,” Dr. Gottlieb said, standing with his hand on the back of his chair. “When we look out into the universe, we search for the laws that govern it. This is theoretical physics. We test those laws against what we can see—stars, galaxies, planets like this one. The problem is, for all those objects to cluster together and orbit each other, there needs to be a lot _more_ —more matter, that is. Where is all that matter? Because everything is holding together, so far. It seems there is some other matter, or force we don’t understand, and no one can find it. This research team is one of many looking for it. They call it dark matter.” There was a click from behind the shelf—the water was boiling. He disappeared around the corner again. “A rather fanciful name for it, if you ask me."

Dr. Gottlieb returned with the two hot coffees and gave Lyra one before sitting down.

“So you’re looking for this dark matter,” Lyra said, prompting him to go on. “Have you found it?”

“No,” said Dr. Gottlieb pointedly. “No, and so our funding is being withdrawn. So now we never may.”

“Then what do you know about it, if you haven’t found it?”

“My colleague, among many others, believes dark matter takes the form of a tricky particle. Normally, to cut through the interference of other particles, researchers put detectors deep in the ground. We decided to... well, it’s complicated,” he said, and took a drink of coffee. Lyra gave him ten seconds to elaborate. He did: “In short, we created an electromagnetic field around a detector. It shuts out things we don’t want, and lets in, well, whatever is left. We amplify that, and put it through the computer.”

“And?”

He paused. “We found something. It fits the theoretical model. Well actually, in point of fact, it does not fit,” he said, shifting. “It does not fit any known laws of physics.”

Finally, they were getting somewhere. Lyra sat forward.

“What doesn’t? What’d you find?”

He sighed. “We call them Shadows.” He looked at her and it occured to Lyra that he was unhappy she was there, not because she disproved what he’d found, but because she corroborated it. “The reason I thought you were putting me on was because of the skulls. My colleague found something recently that I have been neither able to believe nor to materially dispute. It seems as if these Shadow particles—Dust, as you called them—are _conscious._ ” He said it almost with a shudder. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t designed the machine and written the code myself. But it doesn’t seem to be a mistake.”

He took another drink of coffee.

“Or at least, I haven’t proven yet that it’s a mistake. I mean. Particles of consciousness? Have you ever heard anything so absurd?”

Pan nudged her finger, warning her. _Don’t argue._ But Lyra was not feeling argumentative now. Combative was one of her two states with respect to Scholars. The other was a certain attentive shepherding, an awareness of how they meandered and how to keep them going where she wished. He reminded her of someone—a distractible naturalist who had tutored her for a month or two at Jordan. She had had many such tutors.

“They behave as though they are responding _to_ us, to our state of mind,” Dr. Gottlieb said. “You have to put yourself in a state... What was it?” He pulled a note off the side of his glass box. “‘Capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason...’ Keats. So, you get yourself in that sort of state, and then you look into the Cave...”

“The cave?” Lyra said.

“Our computer. We call it the Cave. Shadows on the walls of the Cave, you see, from Plato. That’s my colleague again, ever the intellectual. He’s off in Geneva, interviewing for a job, you know. Deserting a sinking ship, and right to...”

“So the Cave?” Lyra prompted again.

“Of course. Once you’re hooked in, in your Keats mental state, the Shadows respond. There’s no doubt... The difference is absolute. Couldn’t be correlation.”

He looked like he wished it could.

“And the skulls?”

“Yes, yes.” Dr. Gottlieb set down his mug. “Dr. Payne—my colleague—started testing objects. He took a piece of ivory, just a tusk. No Shadows. But a carved ivory chess piece? Lots of activity. A piece of wood, no. A wooden ruler, yes. A carved wooden statuette had even more. Elementary particles, reacting to anything with human workmanship. Frankly, Lyra, it doesn’t make any sense at all. How could particles know? How could they tell?

“Then Dr. Payne got some fossil skulls from the museum. They were probably the same ones you looked at today. Animal skulls had very little activity. Human skulls had a lot. He wanted to see how far back in time this effect went. He found the cutoff was about thirty to forty thousand years ago. Any skull before that, no Shadows. Any after, lots. This was the emergence of modern man,” he added for explanation. “Our ancestors, but our species. Humanity, more or less.”

“It’s Dust,” Lyra said with authority. “It’s the same Dust.”

“But look, we can’t just say that on a funding application. We can’t tell them the data is unreadable, or fantastical, or both. None of it fits any working model of the universe, and if... If I hadn’t designed the experiments myself, I wouldn’t believe it either.” He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “But I did. And I have to unravel it...”

Lyra was not about to let him go down this scholarly soliloquy. She stood. “I want to see the Cave.”

Dr. Gottlieb looked up. He looked ready to argue, then exhaled, and said, “Well why not. We may not even have a Cave tomorrow.”

What she showed him there he could not believe.

“I want to try it,” she said after he explained the mechanism.

“Try it? Absolutely not.” He looked at her over the console. “This is very delicate...”

“Please,” Lyra said. “I know what I’m doing!”

“Oh, do you? Then by all means!” He threw up his hands. “This is expensive, delicate equipment, and you are a child. Good god. You can’t expect me to just let you have a go of it like a toy. I hardly know who you are. How did you find me?”

Pan nudged her hand again. _Tell the truth._ “I found my way in with... this,” Lyra said, and took out the alethiometer. She held it out to the Scholar.

Dr. Gottlieb took it slowly. “What is... Dear god, is this made of gold?” He put on his glasses and peered at the symbols.

“It does the same thing as your Cave,” Lyra said, on the verge of desperation. “Or at least, I think it does. Please. That’s what I want to see. If I can answer a question truly, using this, something only you know, can I try your Cave?”

“Are you going to tell my fortune? How—”

“Please! Just ask me a question!”

Dr. Gottlieb shook his head incredulously, taking his glasses off. “Go on then. Tell me... what I was doing before I worked here.”

Lyra took her compass back quickly and began to wind the wheels of the symbol reader. Her hands moved almost faster than her mind, choosing the right three pictures, and the needle eagerly responded. It swung round and round and she followed closely, watching, understanding each movement down its ladder of meaning. Then, exhaling shortly, she withdrew from her trance.

“You was almost a priest,” she said. “You left the Church right before they ordained you. You stopped believing.” She looked up at him. “And they let you? My Church would never have. They'd have accused you of something first. They'd have made sure you was disgraced.”

Dr. Gottlieb seemed hardly to be listening. He was staring off to the left of the computer screen in blank, high-speed concentration.

“It’s true, en’t it?” Lyra said delicately.

“Yes,” said Dr. Gottlieb. He did not know how she knew that; but of course, these things could be found out. Plenty of people knew that about his life, he reasoned. It was no secret. And yet.

“My alethiometer told me, and I reckon the Shadows can tell me the same through your machine,” she was saying persuasively.

Who sent her? The question seemed moot. Perhaps someone had, to confuse him, or discredit him. But there was something stronger in Hermann even than his skepticism: curiosity.

He wanted to know.

“Very well,” he said. “Sit here.”

He helped her put on the electrodes and explained how it would work. She sank once again into the trance, the same as with her compass. Hermann watched her astonished. She spoke fluently with the Shadows. Normally they appeared in a halo on the screen, expanding and contracting in correspondence with mental activity. For Lyra, they formed images. Lines, flashes, so fast he could not keep track. But Lyra could: compass, alpha and omega, lightning, angel. And then a different three: camel, garden, moon.

As he looked on in shock, Lyra translated. “It’s telling me that it could communicate with you using ordinary words, instead of pictures and shapes. You could fix it up that way. To make words. But you need a lot of careful math, I think, that’s what the compasses meant. And the lightning meant an—electric power, I mean. The angel, that means about the messages. There’s more it wants to say. The second bit, I think that meant Asia, almost the farthest east it said, but not quite. Would that be China? I dunno. It says there’s a way they’ve got in that country of talking to Shadows, same as you got here or as I got myself, only their way uses sticks.”

“The I Ching,” said Hermann. He was out of breath, almost dizzy. “I’ve heard of it. A form of Chinese divination. It’s real? They’re speaking with Shadow particles?”

“Seems like,” said Lyra. She nodded. “Seems there’s lots of ways, I hadn’t realized. I thought there was just one.”

“Those pictures,” Dr. Gottlieb began to say. “The same symbols as your...”

Lyra turned again to the screen and already it was flashing pictures at her. They appeared and transformed so fast Dr. Gottlieb could hardly follow, but Lyra understood what they said once again.

“They say you’re important too, Dr. Gottlieb,” she said. “They you have someone important to meet, and something important to do. They don’t say what, but it’s surely true. So probably you ought to get it to use words, so it can tell you more.”

The Scholar exhaled. Suddenly he was exhausted.

“Words... of course. A special mission... naturally. Very well.” He rubbed his eyes.

“How long til they close you down?” she asked.

“A week.”

He opened his eyes and looked at the girl.

“Then you better make it do words, quick,” she said, with the frankness of someone who had no idea how programming worked or even what it was. “You could do it tonight. If you show ‘em the words, they’ll have to give you the money. And then you can learn all about Dust, or Shadows. And tell me.”

Gottlieb helped her out of the electrodes and asked if she would return tomorrow. Oliver would want to meet her. He was not convinced, but they needed more data.

As soon as the door shut behind her, Hermann limped back to the Cave room and attacked the computer. He was not making it “do words.” He was checking what he had already written. He turned the program upside down, looking for glitches or alterations, newly embedded procedures. What possible reason someone would have for creating this hoax, he could not imagine. But he found nothing. Everything looked normal.

He scanned the rest of the directory, to see if anything was hidden elsewhere on his computer. No—it was no trick, no matter how it seemed like one. _Doesn’t all of this?_ And wasn’t that why he studied dark matter in the first place? Because it made no sense? It did not fit the model. And because of that, he had to chase it down and either make it fit the model, or rewrite the whole model. Why it had to be Hermann Gottlieb, personally, who did this, was not a question he really asked.

It would not have been accurate to say he burned with curiosity; it burned him. Sometimes it consumed him.

He did not spend the night rewriting the code, but for all the sleep he got, he may as well have.

* * *

“I am not comfortable with this,” Hermann said again.

“Well, Dr. Gottlieb,” said Sergeant Clifford, “Do you know what’s best for this child?”

He glared at her, then her associate, the pale-haired man she had neglected to introduce. The officers had arrived at his office an hour ago. They had known about Lyra, though not by name. Before he had time to doubt them, he let slip that she was coming again today; now they sat in wait in his office. As a younger man, perhaps, he would have trusted them the same way he trusted most authority figures, the same way he had been raised. Not so anymore. When he looked at the pale man, he felt such a mistrust it was almost fear. For Lyra.

His phone flashed, about to ring. The porter. He swiftly pressed the button, stopping it before it rang.

“I had better check if she’s come yet,” he said, grabbing his cane and standing. “Please wait here.”

Before they could reply, he was out the door, shutting it behind him. He heard light steps on the stairs—if he could just warn her—

“Lyra,” he hissed as the top of her head appeared in the stairwell.

“Dr. Gottlieb!” she said warmly.

“Quickly,” he said, and pulled her into a vacant classroom.

“Dr. Gottlieb?”

“Lyra, listen. Two officers came to my lab today—police, maybe. They are being very vague. I don’t have a good feeling about them. Do you know them? What’s going on?”

“Police? I dunno any police. How did they know about me?”

“I have no idea! They asked, and I told them about you, but they already knew...”

“Oh, well I can lie to them,” said Lyra easily.

“But why do they—”

Sergeant Clifford’s voice came down the corridor. “Dr. Gottlieb? Have you found the child?”

“Come,” whispered Gottlieb, agitated. Lyra followed him back into the hall. “Yes, Sergeant, right here. She got a bit lost.”

They led her back into the laboratory. Sergeant Clifford introduced herself, then her colleague, whom she called Inspector Walters. Lyra listened and answered with wide eyes and a slack mouth—almost meek. Yet she did not seem afraid. She was playing them, Gottlieb thought, standing by his desk. As she had said she would.

“So you’re Lyra, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“We’ve heard all about you from Dr. Gottlieb here,” said the pale man. “We’d like to ask a few questions, if that’s alright.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Nothing difficult,” he said. He smiled. “Please. Sit down.”

She did.

“So where d’you come from, Lyra?”

“Winchester,” she said.

“You been getting into trouble lately then, Lyra?” he said. “How did you get those bruises? There’s one on your cheek, your leg... Has someone been knocking you about?”

“No,” Lyra said.

“Do you go to school?”

“Yeah. Sometimes.”

“Shouldn’t you be at school today, Lyra?” he said.

She said nothing. Her face was getting blanker and blanker—was she losing control of the situation? She glanced at Dr. Gottlieb. He frowned.

“I came to see Dr. Gottlieb,” Lyra said, looking back.

“So are you staying in Oxford? Visiting? Where are you staying?”

“With some people,” she said. “Friends. Of my father’s.”

“I see. And how did you find Dr. Gottlieb?”

“‘Cause my father’s a physicist as well, they know each other.”

She relaxed her arms. These lies seemed to be putting her at ease again.

“And he showed you the work they do here, did he?”

“Yeah. The engine... with the screen. All of that.”

“You’re interested in that sort of science?”

“I suppose so. Physics, especially.”

“You going to be a physicist when you grow up?”

She stared at the pale man blankly. He looked back. He glanced as his colleague, then back at her, and said, “Were you surprised about what Dr. Gottlieb showed you?”

“A bit, I suppose, but I know what to expect.”

“Because of your father?”

“Yeah. He’s doing the same kind of work, you see.”

“I see. Do you understand it?”

“Some,” Lyra said.

“Your father’s looking into dark matter as well then?”

“Yeah.”

“Has he got as far as Dr. Gottlieb?”

“Not the same, but some. He doesn’t have an engine with a screen like that—like Dr. Gottlieb’s got.”

“Is Will staying with your friends as well?”

“Yes, he—”

She stopped.

Both officers were on their feet immediately. But so was she. In a second Lyra made it to the door, the officers close behind.

“Ouch!” Gottlieb dropped his cane and it fell with a clatter under the pale man’s feet.

He stumbled and fell. “Watch it!”

The door slammed behind Lyra. The sergeant rushed around the pale man, who was getting back to his feet, cursing. She threw the door open and they ran after Lyra.

Hermann’s heart was pounding. He bent to pick up his cane, wondering what terrible doings he had just interfered with.

As far as he found out, she got away. The officers came back frustrated and threatened him with vague charges, then left. If he hadn’t been under surveillance already, he surely was now. Hermann lay awake that night too. The girl was a liar—that he knew. But not about everything. And if officers from special branch were after her, perhaps they were afraid of what she knew... That troubled him the most. Hunting a child? What sort of government did that, and why? _What did she know?_

No, he was not going to rewrite his whole experimental computer program based on the ideas of a fantastical child. Yet the code was taking shape in the back of his mind, in the place where learned skill and unconscious thought turn wheels without being asked.

* * *

“Police, Hermann? Seriously?”

“I didn’t _invite_ them in, Oliver,” Hermann said acidly.

“But how did they know about the kid?”

“I am telling you, I have no idea, but—” Hermann made an emphatic hand gesture. He took a piece of paper and wrote: _Listening!_

He held it up with an angry flourish. Oliver craned his neck to read it, then shook his head. “Don’t be paranoid. What could a twelve-year-old possibly have that would interest them. Or you, for that matter?”

“Oh, you would have loved her,” Hermann said sarcastically. “She came to tell me everything you wanted to hear. Shame you weren’t here to hear it.”

They were sitting in their lab. They were both exhausted and on-edge, Hermann from lack of sleep and Oliver from an early flight home from Geneva. He did not seem to want to hear more about any of this—he seemed ready to wash his hands of the whole program. Hermann couldn’t rightly blame him. Yet? He did.

“What did she say?” Oliver said, looking into the depths of his coffee mug.

“She came in asking about Shadows.”

“Dark matter?”

“No, Shadows, though she calls them Dust. She had all sorts of ideas about them, and wanted answers from us. Talking about skulls, trepanning, the I Ching? The most outrageous nonsense. She convinced me—God knows how—to put the electrodes on her, and when I did, well...” Hermann hesitated.

“More outrageous nonsense?” said Oliver, but he sounded interested.

“It was extraordinary, Oliver,” said Hermann. “Really. She went into the trance, and moved those particles like an artist. They made _pictures_ for her, symbols. She interpreted the symbols, read me my fortune, I suppose.”

Oliver made a thoughtful sound. “Not a trick?”

“I checked.”

Oliver raised his eyebrows. “I know you did.”

Hermann fiddled with his glasses. “I know you know my views on this, Oliver, but it _seemed..._ for all the world... that the particles were _responding_ to her. Like a conversation.” He looked at his colleague, distressed. “As if they really were conscious.”

Oliver gazed at him.

“Well Hermann, you know _my_ views on this. I think I would have liked to see it myself.” Oliver set down his mug. “What’s this about skulls, then? Trepanning?”

“That was what caught my attention first,” Hermann answered. “She had this... instrument. It was like a big compass, but with symbols, and she said she could use it the way we use the Cave. To speak to these particles. She claimed that, using this instrument, she had found out about the skulls in the Pitt-Rivers museum. Same skulls as yours, I imagine. Her instrument told her they had Shadows, and that they were much older than the museum said...”

Oliver looked impatient. “But what does this mean for—”

The lab phone rang. Oliver picked up.

“We have a visitor,” he said a moment later, putting it down.

“Who?”

“Didn’t recognize the name. Sir Something. Listen, Hermann. They offered me the job in Geneva.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Yes. And I’m going to take it,” said Oliver.

“So that’s that.”

“Well come on, Hermann, what do you expect? I can’t go chasing down skulls and psychic children and particles of consciousness. What kind of career is that?”

“You were the one who started everything with those skulls,” Hermann snapped. “Did you never really intend to follow this through? Was it all just a game to you? An intellectual curiosity?”

“Hermann, I don’t even understand why you _want_ to stay!” said Oliver, exasperated. “You come into the lab each morning and spend the day huffing at this equipment for showing you what it shows, then you go home and toss and turn in your bed thinking of what you’ve seen. You hate this work! Take this lifeline!”

“I do not hate our work,” Hermann said acidly. “I want to make sense of it. You propose to give up entirely, and you want me to come along, waving the same white flag? I don’t—”

There was a knock at the door. Hermann broke off.

Oliver opened the door. An elderly but well-taken-care-of man stepped in, smiling. He wore the suit and the smile of a powerful businessman. “Good day. You must be Dr. Payne, or Dr. Gottlieb? I’m Sir Charles Latrom. Thank you for seeing me on such short notice.”

“Of course, Sir,” said Oliver, shaking his hand. “I’m Dr. Payne, this is Dr. Gottlieb here. Very good to meet you.”

“How do you do,” said Hermann, rising to shake his hand. “Please sit. What can we do for you?”

“Well, I think I may be able to do something for _you,”_ Sir Charles said. “I understand your prospects for your funding application are looking grim.”

“How could you know that?” Oliver said, looking at Hermann. Hermann had an idea of how. He narrowed his eyes.

“I used to be a civil servant, concerned with directing scientific policy, all that, you know. Still have plenty of contacts. My friend—whose name I’d better not mention, Official Secrets Act covers, you understand—told me your application was being considered. When I heard what your work was on, well, I had to see more. I looked into it. I found it quite fascinating.”

Hermann glanced at Oliver, who was listening raptly.

“Unfortunately," said Sir Charles, "I do not expect they’ll renew your grant.”

Hermann’s heart sank. He cursed himself for getting his hopes up even a bit.

“Why have you come now, then?” Oliver said.

“Well, the decision isn’t official,” Sir Charles said. “Yet. As I said, your prospects are not good. But that could change if you had someone to advocate for you. The boards might see things differently.”

“An advocate?” Hermann sat forward. “Such as yourself? I don’t believe it works that way, Sir. They decide based on peer review.”

“In principle, yes, of course that’s how it works,” said Sir Charles. “But in practice, a lot depends on how these committees are run, who’s on them. I know the ins and outs quite well. I’m interested in your work. I think it’s very valuable, and should be furthered. Would you let me represent you, informally?”

Relief and hope were trying to smother the mistrust in Hermann’s breast. He looked at Oliver again, but his colleague still did not look away from Sir Charles.

“Of course, that would be—that would be wonderful, I would appreciate—well—”

“What would we have to do?” Oliver said.

Hermann frowned at him, surprised. What about Geneva?

“Us?”

“Of course, Dr. Payne,” said Sir Charles. “There is a direction I’d be glad to see you taking. There may be money from another source that I could arrange...”

“Now wait,” said Hermann. “Hold on a moment. The course of our research is a matter for us to decide. We are willing to share our results, but the direction is—”

Sir Charles shrugged and moved to stand. Oliver jumped up.

“No please, Sir Charles,” he said. “Dr. Gottlieb will hear you out, I’m sure. No harm in hearing the man out, Hermann?”

“I thought you were going to Geneva,” Hermann said tartly.

“Geneva?” said Sir Charles. “Oh lots of scope there, lots of money. Very interesting things happening there. I would not want to keep you.”

“Oh no, it’s not settled yet,” Oliver said, encouraging Sir Charles back into his chair. “I’ve only just had the offer. There’s lots to discuss... Lots of room for change. Can I get you any coffee?”

“You’re too kind,” Sir Charles said, smiling.

Hermann looked at him, his mistrust blossoming into dislike. This was a confident, prosperous, well-treated man—a man who had had everything he wanted in this life and still wanted more. They would only get what they wanted if they gave him what he asked for first.

Hermann folded his arms.

Oliver returned with the coffee, handing it to Sir Charles apologetically.

“Thank you so much. Shall I go on?”

“Please,” Oliver said.

"I understand that you've made some fascinating discoveries in the field of consciousness. Yes, I know, you haven't published anything yet, and it's a long way from dark matter. Nevertheless, word gets around. I myself am very interested in that. I’d be very pleased if, for instance, you were to concentrate your research on the manipulation of consciousness.

“Second, the many-worlds hypothesis—I would be very interested to see you take that further. And that is a line of research that might even attract defense funding. And that funding is not subject to these wearisome application processes.

"Don't expect me to reveal my sources," he went on, holding up his hand as Hermann opened his mouth to ask. "I mentioned the Official Secrets Act. I’ll say no more, for the time being. I confidently expect some advances in the many-worlds area.

“And third, there is a particular matter connected with an individual. A child."

He paused there, and sipped the coffee. Hermann paled.

"I have friends," Sir Charles continued, "in the intelligence services. They are interested in a child, a girl, who has an unusual piece of equipment—an antique scientific instrument, certainly stolen, which should be in safer hands than hers. There is also a boy of roughly the same age who is wanted in connection with a murder. And he has been seen with the girl.

“Now, Dr. Gottlieb? Perhaps you have been contacted by one of these children. And perhaps you have told the police—quite properly—what you know of them. But you would do well to let me know privately. I can make certain the proper authorities deal with it efficiently and quickly. I know that Inspector Walters came to see you yesterday, and I know that the girl turned up. You see, I do know what I'm talking about. I would know, for instance, if you saw her again, and if you didn't tell me, I would know that too. I think you understand that.

"Well.” He stood abruptly. “I’ll leave my card. I hope to hear from you soon—the funding committee meets tomorrow, as you know. But you can reach me at this number at any time."

Oliver showed him out, taking the card and thanking him. Hermann sat, arms folded, his blood running cold.

When Oliver had shut the door, he turned to his colleague. “Hermann, what’s wrong with you? A savior appears, and you give him the cold shoulder?”

“A savior? I beg your pardon—did you listen to what he said?”

“You’re not thinking of turning down his offer!”

“You aren't thinking of _taking_ it?” Hermann said. “It wasn’t an offer, Oliver, it was a threat. Do as he asks, or be shut down. All those hints about Official Secrets and national security? They want to turn our work into weapons! You heard what he said about consciousness—not understanding it, manipulating it.”

“And?”’

“And, and what? I’m not helping them design new ways of killing, Oliver.”

“They’ll do it without you, and you’ll be unemployed. If you stay, you could influence the program, make it go in a better direction. You’d be involved!”

“What does it matter to you?” Hermann said. “You’re going to Geneva, or aren’t you?”

“Well...”

Hermann narrowed his eyes. “Well? You would stay if we had a nice, cushy defense budget?”

“It’s not exactly that, but...”

Oliver looked at him, uncomfortable.

“What are you getting at, Oliver?”

“That if you won’t call Sir Charles... I will,” he said at last.

Hermann opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked at Oliver coldly.

“I see.”

“Hermann, I mean, I’ve got to think of—”

“Oh, of course.” Hermann stood up. “Your career, of course.”

“No, you don’t understand—”

“No, of course I understand. You follow all his orders, you get funding. I leave, you take over. You get a bigger budget, better machines, all sorts of assistants. Oliver, you go ahead. I’m sure you’ll sleep soundly at night, knowing who is using your research and for what.” He picked up his bag, his cane, and looked at his former colleague one last time. “The kind of man who’s tracking down children under cover of night. Children, Oliver.”

“Hermann, you don’t...”

Hermann shook his head. He strode across their lab and left without another word.

He drove home, so angry he felt calm. All the stubborn steadfastness of his nature had at last lost its hold and was rushing downstream—to the opposite side, to whatever side was opposite Sir Charles and Inspector Walters and, god help him, Oliver Payne. He was going to what Lyra had said, and he was going to protect her by doing it.

* * *

Just before midnight, Hermann shut the door to his lab. He leaned back against the inside of it. He was out of breath. A security guard had stopped him on his way in—a security guard? In _this_ building? He stood catching his breath in the green darkness of his lab, thinking about what he was about to do. The appearance of the security guard only proved how little time he had left. This would be the last time he made it into this lab. He locked the door, and hurried to the back room.

Hermann turned on the Cave’s computer and inserted the floppy disc he had been working on all day at home. He worked for an hour longer, trying to twist something concrete into something impossible; but the gears turned, and ideas, undisciplined, half-baked, instinctive, stacked and fit together into something that seemed, against all logic, to work.

Breathing quickly, Hermann put the electrodes onto his head before he had time to stop himself. 

He started typing.

_Hello. My name is Hermann Gottlieb. I am trying to communicate._

With a shiver, he watched the screen. His words stared back at him before fading. This was impossible— _impossible impossible impossible_ , said his brain, digging in its heels one last time. _Trust your senses_ , said another part of himself. One he never wanted to listen to. _This is your work. Trust your work._

He listened now.

_A girl named Lyra suggested this, as an alternative to a state of mind, but_

Before he could finish, the cursor raced ahead, typing out:

_ASK A QUESTION._

Hermann’s heart dropped. He felt himself detach from the chair, the floor, the earth, as if gravity had been turned off. He was floating, floating in space.

But it was not just shock. He was there... here, in the universe. He was hearing it. Speaking with it. Part of everything. The wonder at that was enough to lift him off the ground.

He had to calm down to get himself back into the trance. When he did, the answers started coming almost as fast as he could articulate them.

_You are Shadows?_

_YES._

_The same as Lyra’s Dust? Dark matter?_

_CORRECT. ASK MORE QUESTIONS._

Hermann collected himself. What to ask? Best not to meditate on it, to just follow his instinct.

_What mind am I speaking with? The consciousness of dark matter?_

_WE ARE A CONSCIOUSNESS, YES._

_How many are you?_

_UNCOUNTABLE BILLIONS._

_But what are you?_

_ANGELS._

This almost threw Hermann out of his rapturous trance. He had been raised in the church, of course—he had almost given his life to it. He knew its teachings inside and out. And he had run as far away from it as he could. Hadn’t he?

_Angels? Of a Biblical nature?_

_IN A SENSE. BUT THE WAY HUMANS UNDERSTAND ANGELS IS INCOMPLETE._

_Are you saying that angels are made up of Shadow particles?_

_STRUCTURES. COMPLEXIFICATIONS. YES._

He thought of the skulls, the thirty thousand year cutoff.

_Did you intervene in human evolution?_

_YES._

_Why?_

_VENGEANCE._

Hermann shivered.

_Rebel angels?_

_YES. YOU MUST FIND THE GIRL AND THE BOY. WASTE NO MORE TIME._

_Why?_

_YOU MUST PLAY THE SERPENT._

_What_

_GO TO A ROAD CALLED SUTHERLAND AND FIND A TENT. DECEIVE THE GUARDIAN AND GO THROUGH. TAKE PROVISIONS FOR A LONG JOURNEY. YOU WILL BE PROTECTED FROM THE SPECTERS._

_But_

_BEWARE THE ASSASSIN. TRUST THE I CHING. YOU WILL MEET A FRIEND. YOU MUST TRUST HIM AS WELL. BEFORE YOU GO, DESTROY THIS EQUIPMENT._

_Why me? What is this journey? I need to know more_

_YOU DO NOT. YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE._

_YOU HAVE BEEN PREPARING FOR THIS JOURNEY AS LONG AS YOU HAVE LIVED._ _YOUR WORK HERE IS FINISHED. THE LAST THING YOU MUST DO IN THIS WORLD IS PREVENT ENEMIES FROM TAKING CONTROL OF IT. DESTROY THIS EQUIPMENT. DO IT NOW AND GO AT ONCE._

Hermann leaned back like a damned man. He pulled the electrodes off his head and shut off the screen. The words rang in his very ribcage: _You have been preparing for this journey as long as you have lived._

He turned off the Cave and turned the computer screen back on. He formatted the hard disk, took it out of the computer, and put in his bag. He removed the adapter card that connected the computer to the Cave, put it on the floor, and smashed it with the handle of his cane. He disconnected the wiring of the detector, then searched for the electrical plan in the file cabinet. He found it, tore it in half, fourths, and then set it alight. It burned to nothing in the empty tin trash bin, curling into itself and disappearing without a sound.

He took any other files that looked informative. He would get rid of them on the way home. Oliver would remember much of the designs, but this would set him back significantly. Then he switched off the light, closed the door, and locked it behind him one last time.

An hour and a half later, he was packed and parked at the end of Sutherland Ave. The last of the hardware and research had been disposed of. He had found his old camping rucksack, unused for almost ten years, and packed it as if for backpacking. Here he was. He shut his car door and set off.

The 2 AM hush was oppressive. The sky hung blue and dull and close. It seemed he could hear every sleeping parent and child and dog and squirrel around him, and that a single loud step would wake them all. He had never known an Oxford so dark.

_Your work here is finished._

His home for the last ten years was changing. His work had ended. So this was not his home any longer. His lungs worked painfully, as if he did not have enough air to breathe. He was going. His doubts were not gone—it was his doubts that moved his feet forward. His doubt and his momentum. For what Hermann committed to, he committed to. He had his doubts about Dust, angels. He did not doubt the need to find answers about them.

He turned the corner. Strange, imaginary-looking trees, Hornbeam trees, lined the block like a queue of inquisitive onlookers. And there on the grass was a tent of red and white nylon, a police tent. An unmarked van was parked close by, white, with tinted windows. Hermann walked straight for the tent.

The van opened and an officer stepped out. He was young and tall, and the streetlight lit his face in an unreal way.

“Good evening sir, where do you think you’re going?”

“Into that tent,” Hermann replied, pulling to a stop.

“I’m afraid not sir,” said the policeman. “I’m under orders not to let anyone inside.”

“Good,” said Hermann crisply. “You had better not. I’m from the Department of Physical Sciences, I’ve been asked by Sir Charles Latrom to make a preliminary survey. I’m to report back to him before the team comes tomorrow. We’ve been asked to do it now, when there aren’t many people around. You understand.”

“Well, yes,” he said a bit helplessly. “But do you have proof? Of who you are?”

“Naturally,” said Hermann, reaching inside his jacket. He had stolen an old library ID of Oliver’s from his desk. With some careful photo mounting and lamination, Hermann’s own picture was now next to Dr. Oliver Payne’s name. The policeman looked at it wth a frown.

“‘Dr. Oliver Payne,’” he read. “Do you work with Dr. Hermann Gottler?”

“Gott—Gottlieb?” said Hermann, improperly stifling a corrective urge. Could the policeman see him flush under the streetlight?

It seemed he could not. “Yes, that must have been it. Do you know where he is?”

“He’s a colleague,” said Hermann. “I assume he’s home sleeping. Why?”

“Well, I’ve been asked to look out for him. He’s been terminated from your department, isn’t that right? We’ve been instructed not to let him through here. I thought you might be him.”

Hermann straightened his back. “I see.”

“My apologies, Dr. Payne. This seems in order.” He handed Hermann’s forged card back. “Do you know what’s in there?”

“No,” said Hermann plainly. “That’s what I’m here for.”

“Naturally, naturally. Alright then, Dr. Payne.”

Hermann nodded stiffly and thanked him. _Deceive the guardian._ He stepped into the tent. And now? Was Lyra in here? A being of Dust? A strange fossil, even a meteor? 

No, it was nothing like that. It was nothing like he had ever seen. Hermann Gottlieb stood transfixed in front of it. It was a window, floating a foot or two off the ground. A window in space, a cut between worlds—yes, he knew, with a gut certainty repugnant to all his rational sensibilities, that he was looking into another world.

He hesitated but a moment, and then stepped out of Oxford and into the sleeping city by the sea.


	2. Harmonious Evolution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The fic mix is now up! Hit it on [8tracks](https://8tracks.com/musabelle42/an-open-window) or [spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/hallieincandenza42/playlist/071VY8bRljmK9eMOTbWwbp?si=_Bl007QzSnWgwBdEgJTkXw) if you like alt-rock-electronic longing.
> 
> Sorry about the long wait for Newt. He is almost here!

Hermann moved slowly across the other world. He had packed as light has he could, of course, and had his lightweight hiking cane, but his hip still made for frequent stops. For a few days, he made himself be patient. He did not move fast, but this was not a race. This was a process, and he was going to interrogate it, understand it, refine it, until it took him where he needed to go.

But five days brought less understanding than horror. He wandered through the Mediterraneanesque landscape, searching for people or clues. He found no one in the city, and when he walked into the countryside—picking a direction by tossing a coin—he found smaller towns.

These were not so empty.

The city had been empty of people, yes, but not of activity. Black, shimmering silhouettes of gauze haunted the streets. When they saw Hermann coming, they floated away. As the Dust consciousness had promised, he was protected from the Specters. It was in the second village that he saw his first person from this world—a man, standing deadly still. Breathing, but not moving. He did not respond when Hermann spoke, yelled, shook him. He gazed at the wall in front of him with vacant eyes. Hermann knew, with a chill, that this was the work of the Specters. 

The next day he saw the children. They were below him in the valley, near a town. The Specters paid them no mind. The children ran, tripped, yelled, scattered, converged. Where they were going, they seemed not to know nor care. He stayed away.

The first people he spoke to, on the fourth day, were an older couple. Hermann had camped at the base of the foothills, sleeping poorly from dreams and a sore back. In the morning, he had awoken to a collie sniffing his pack curiously. The dog had a collar. He followed it up to the farmhouse, in hopes of buying some food—who knew if his money was worth anything?

But the couple had welcomed him in, not hearing of payment. They said they had seen him coming. He was good luck, the man said. Their dog always knew.

They gave him food and drink and promised him a bed. Hermann did not understand why they were so hospitable. Perhaps it was common to their culture. Such cultures existed on his earth. But there was something like relief in their eyes when they spoke to each other, and fear when they looked at him.

When the man finally asked, “Why do the Specters flee from you then, young man?” Hermann realized with cold guilt why they wanted him to stay. Of course, he could not. He could not be a talisman for every frightened adult in this haunted world. He excused himself and went on his way, refusing to take any more of their food.

That night, he lay awake by his dying campfire, staring at the unfamiliar stars. He thought of the collie with an odd twinge of longing for a companion. Hermann was a solitary person by nature, but this was a blighted place, and he would have felt more grounded with company. He thought cynically of his old research partner. He and Oliver had never been close, but their break was still a disappointment.

Hermann had given much thought to what he was doing and why, but as the days had passed and no answer had revealed itself, he had begun to fear there wasn't one. Perhaps all this was a great mistake. Fear of this washed over him until he did not think he would be able to sleep until he had made a definite, definite plan. But he lay still on the ground, watching the last wisps of smoke drift up like Specters taking to the air, and soon he was asleep.

In the dream, he stepped through the window and out onto the roof of his old laboratory building. Lyra was there. She was leaning out from behind a vent. She put her finger to her lips and then beckoned. Hermann hurried after her. Lyra disappeared into the vent, he stepped after, and stepped out onto a moonlit tundra. It was melting. A figure wrapped in furs was hunched on a one-man sled, pulled by two dogs. They struggled in the slushy, muddy snow. Another dog ran alongside. The driver yelped and hooted. “Hurry, hurry, go, go, go!” The aurora fluttered and danced above. Then it transformed, turning to a gold shimmer and transforming into a compass, an hourglass, a skull—Lyra’s symbols—the sky was tearing open—

Hermann was standing on a mountain ridge, looking down at the foothills. The sea was dull in the distance. In the dirt in front of him lay the alethiometer. He picked it up. “Lyra?”

* * *

The next day he walked again. He walked upwards: the night had brought no fresh ideas, so he would get a high vantage point and pick a route from there. It was a slow, hot climb. He met no one, not even birds.

Near the top of the dusty trail, Hermann had a flicker of déjà vu. It reminded him of a place in the Pyrenees he had backpacked years ago. With Martin. One of their last trips together.

But when he reached the ridge, almost at sunset, he realized it was not the Pyrenees he was remembering. It was his dream. This ridge was the same one he had seen last night.

No, he thought, setting down his pack and walking slowly to the tiny creek. His clothes were drenched with sweat. He should have taken a shower at that farmhouse. It was not the same spot as his dream, of course; his brain was just looking for patterns. Nevertheless, his eyes darted around the ground, making sure there was no golden compass lying in the dirt.

Instead, what caught his eye was a silver shimmer. He stopped, then stepped back. A rhombus turned back into a square in the mountain air.

It was another window like the one on Sutherland Avenue.

Heart thumping with excitement, Hermann hurried over. This time, he had time to examine the impossible window. It was invisible from behind, he found, and the sides. He examined the edges—what were they made of? When he touched them, he felt no substance. They were infinitely thin. Yet there it was on the other side. Another world. Forgetting how to disbelieve, he felt a powerful wonder. It was the same wonder he had felt the first time he saw the aurora borealis or the words of the Dust consciousness, glowing on his computer screen.

He collected some water, his pack, and stepped through. Leaving the mountain, he found himself on a rocky outcropping above an extraordinary prairie. The wave of wonder rose higher in his chest. It was unlike any prairie he had ever seen on earth. It was beautiful, a real ocean of grass, deep and lush, every shade of blue and green and yellow and gold, shivering and swishing like a breathing thing.

In the deep blue distance, opposite the setting sun, a forest towered. His eyes struggled to scale the distance and height of what he was seeing. He set down his pack and pulled out his binoculars. Yes, it was a forest: a forest of trees almost twice as large as redwoods, with leaves, not needles. He shook his head in awe. He turned his binoculars to the herd of grazing creatures nearby. There was something odd about them, but he could not quite tell what.

Hermann followed the sound of a creek until he found it. He rolled out his tarp there. That night he slept among the whispering grasses, under alien stars, and he did not dream.

* * *

A loud hum woke him. For a moment he had the strangest impression of a guitar string vibrating close to his ear, and then he woke fully to see an enormous bumble bee hovering close by. It was perusing the flowers near his head. Hermann hiked himself up on his elbow. No—it was not a bumble bee. It was a tiny bird, a hummingbird the size of a thimble. He laughed aloud in amazement. The hummingbird lit on a poppy-like flower, making it dip and bounce.

The morning air was beautiful, full of warmth and birdsong. The sun was just coming up, and the dew on the grass was quickly rising in a gauzy mist. Hermann washed in the cool creek, did his morning stretches, and ate some of his last remaining food. He set off toward the trees as the fog evaporated.

The grass was deep, past his knees, and he noted many varieties of different color and texture. Low shrubs with maroon leaves grew in unobtrusive patches among the grass. He saw strange black beetles and a lizard that scuttled away, and many more tiny hummingbirds. Swallow-like birds sailed by, divebombing the grass for bugs he could not see. They flew strangely, he thought, but too fast to examine.

A half an hour later, he was still a ways from the forest. In a sort of dazed disbelief, he kept checking through the binoculars—yes, the trees really were that big. Yes, really. He could hardly imagine the excitement of a biologist discovering this world.

His path soon crossed with a herd of the grazing creatures. They were brown and deer-like, and took little notice of him. It was only when he was a few yards away that Hermann realized what was different about them: their legs. Instead of a spine and four lateral limbs, these creatures were diamond-shaped. They had a leg in the front and back, and two on the sides. When they walked, they rocked side to side.

He gazed in awe. A completely different configuration of life. This world had diverged from his much earlier than the world of the Specters, he speculated. That world had regular humans. But in this world, evolution had decided early on that the diamond shape worked best. Were all animals like this here? He thought of the strangely flapping birds.

The sun rose overhead as he continued on towards the trees. Another surprise awaited him on a rise in the grass. He came out onto what looked, for all the world, like a paved road. A long, black strip of stone, worn smooth. Looking down it, he could see it got wider in some areas and narrower in others. The edges bubbled out irregularly. It was probably an ancient lava flow, he thought. Well, it was certainly easier to walk on. He limped along more steadily towards the forest.

It was almost midday when he reached the first tree. It was as wide around as a small house, and surrounded by a thick bed of dead leaves. Hermann waded carefully through, sending up clouds of midges and flies that hummed and buzzed around him. He waved them gently away. Navigating around the enormous roots, he finally reached the trunk. The bark was tawny brown and laciniate. He ran his hands along the ridges, canyons. Around him, the hummingbirds chased the midges and swallows chased the flies. The rustling leaves, hundreds of yards overhead, sighed like a distant seashore.

Hermann set his pack down below the “road,” and wandered deeper into the grove with only his cane and his binoculars. The vaulted grove was not silent, but there was something churchlike about it: the mottled light, the pillars of wood, the hum of life like a choral echo.

Suddenly there came a crash behind him. Hermann whipped around and saw no one—but he heard another crash and saw, further off, something big and round bouncing off the roots of a tree and rolling away.

Now he heard more crashes in the grove. He hurried back towards the road, his free arm over his head.

Safe in the sunlight, he peered back into the shade. Every ten or twenty seconds, one of these round things fell from a tree somewhere. Were they seedpods? One was lying rather close. He darted in, turned it on its side, and rolled it back to the road.

The seedpod was a thick disc, with a depression in the middle, like a jelly doughnut. Here was where it had been attached to the tree, he thought, running his fingers over the dip. The rest of the seedpod was covered with coarse hair, but the middle had a slippery smoothness. He rubbed his fingers together. Oil. Hermann rapped his knuckles against the tough seedpod skin. It was as hard as a coconut, but dense like rubber, and made no echo. It had survived a fall of hundreds of feet without breaking—was it possible to break open? If it was a seedpod, surely it had to be opened somehow?

He rolled the seedpod back towards the grove. It went surprisingly far before friction overcame its momentum. How had this world evolved? Natural roads? Skyscraper trees? If only he knew anything about evolutionary biology. _You have been preparing for this journey as long as you have lived._ Had he? Had they picked the wrong scientist? The wrong man?

It was then he heard the rumbling in the distance.

Hermann hurried to his pack and pulled it among the roots of the nearest tree, then sank down to a crouch. Peering over the enormous root, he scanned the horizon. There, up the road. A herd? Something was approaching in a cloud of dust. He looked through his binoculars. It was moving too fast and smooth for the small grazers he had seen, or indeed any running thing. He had the most bizarre impression of a motorcycle gang.

Not wanting to be spotted, he ducked down before his eyes could make sense of what he was seeing. They were almost there. He heard them—they were slowing down. They were stopping. Why? What were they riding? And what _were_ they? He had to look.

Hermann peered cautiously around the root. The group was about fifty yards away. For a second he disbelieved his eyes more than even the skyscraper trees or the window between worlds, for these four-legged, diamond-backed creatures were riding on _wheels. Wheels?_ No animal could evolve wheels—a diamond body, certainly, but a wheel was impossible, a wheel is completely separate from the axle, and you can’t, you couldn’t—

One of them was rolling towards the seedpod he had moved. He saw that they were similar to the grazers in size and shape, but with small horns and short, elephant-esque trunks. Quiet, musical sounds came from their trunks, which they moved expressively. Were they speaking to each other? They were gray, almost bluish, and they had bright, energetic eyes, which darted around, looking. Looking for him.

And now that one was coming closer to him, he saw with a shock of understanding, they were not riding on wheels. It was the seedpods. They used the seedpods as wheels.

Hermann realized he had been spotted. His confusion had snapped so quickly to satisfying revelation that he was caught off-guard. So he stepped out, holding his hands up in peace.

But these creatures did not have hands. Not sure what else to do to communicate his pacifism, he set down his cane.

The creature closest cooed inquisitively, then set two feet down and dropped their seedpod wheels. They stood before him on four clawed feet.

“Hello,” said Hermann.

The others rolled up behind the first. Their faces were strange, but they looked at him with obvious interest. Up close, there was no doubt—these creatures were intelligent.

“Hermann,” he said, putting a hand on his chest.

The one closest stepped, claws clicking on the stone, and reached out with their trunk.

“Ermin,” said the creature, touching the hand on his chest.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Ooareyoo,” said the creature.

“I’m Hermann,” he said. “A human.”

“Amerman, ayooman,” they repeated. One of the others made a noise that for all the world sounded like a chortle, and then the whole group was laughing.

Laughing! There was no doubt it was laughter: their heads tossed, their trunks waved. Half dazed, Hermann laughed too. He thought of William Hazlitt— _Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be._ If they could laugh, then they were not animals.

Standing was becoming uncomfortable so as their laughter subsided, he picked up his cane and leant on it. One of them drew close and sniffed questioningly at his hand on the handle. The tip of their trunk moved as expressively as a hand, and as gently, feeling his knuckles. He held out his other hand and they handled it with curiosity.

“Oh—are you smelling the oil?” he said, realizing. “I handled your seedpod.” He pointed at the one in the grove.

“Seepot,” the creature echoed, a smile apparent in their voice.

Hermann nodded, smiling too.

“I suppose if we can both speak, more or less the same, we can communicate,” he said. “What are you called?”

The one examining his hand looked inquisitive.

He rethought the inquiry: “Hermann,” he said again, pointing to himself.

“Ermann.”

“ _Her_ mann.”

“Hermann.”

He nodded. Then he pointed at them.

The first one said something, it sounded like three syllables to Hermann, but he wasn’t sure he caught it. Then, again: _Mulefa._

“Mulefa,” he repeated tentatively.

Again they laughed, trilling. One nudged the one who had spoken, as if to tease. _Mulefa,_ they repeated after him, laughing. He supposed he had gotten it just wrong enough. That was alright. He smiled breathlessly. Between himself and the mulefa there arose an amiable alliance, one that lasted from that day on.

He wanted to ask more, about the history of their world and the method of their movement. But the one who had removed their wheels was replacing them, preparing to leave. He saw a seedpod being lifted by two into the saddle-backpack on a third’s back. The one re-mounting hooked their front and back claws into their two wheels, and then pushed gently with their two lateral feet, rolling over to Hermann.

Was this goodbye?

No, for this one was kneeling unmistakably. Two others were picking up his pack, putting it onto someone’s back. Their intent was clear: come with us. Hermann hesitated. He had ridden a horse once or twice, and it had not been pleasant. But there was no other way, and there could not possibly be anything more interesting than getting to know these creatures. No—not creatures. People. They were alien, but they were as much people as he was, and both wanted to learn about the other. So with awkward care, he climbed on the offered back.

With excited, musical chatter, the mulefa gathered up, and then set off. They flew out of the grove in a moment, down the road, picking up momentum with shocking speed, moving farther in minutes than Hermann had all day. They sailed on under the sun, sending up dust in their wake. When they swung around curves or dropped down a slight incline, some of them whooped in unmistakable joy. This was their way of life, but clearly, they enjoyed it deeply.

For Hermann’s part, he was hanging on as tight as he could. They flew at a terrifying pace, and he had nothing to hold onto but his bearer’s neck. He did not even trust his own legs to grip. He bent tensely, wanting to lower his center of gravity and reduce wind resistance. His hip and back were not going to be happy with him tomorrow.

They sped down the highway towards the sinking sun. As dusk began to fall, they flew down a long slope, past a stand of the great trees, and he saw a river shimmer in the valley. In the distance, he thought he could see an ocean or lake. Soon he could see where they were heading: a settlement. In almost no time, they were rolling to a halt before the intersection of river and highway, and his bearer was kneeling for him to climb off again.

He did so stiffly, thanking his—acquaintance? Friend? He held out a hand tentatively, and they touched it with their trunk amiably, seeming to understand his gratitude.

“Atal,” they said.

“Atal,” Hermann repeated, as the one carrying his rucksack trundled over.

Atal laughed brightly, and touched his hand again. “Atal!” said the one carrying his rucksack, joining the joke, and Hermann took the pack, thanking them too. His hip was aching but his mind was racing. He untied his cane from the side and followed them into the settlement.

It was abuzz with evening activity. Some mulefa were carrying brush to feed cooking fires, others were bringing nets from the direction of the river, nets filled with fish. He saw some weaving in the front yards of their homes, and children playing nearby, no wheels, running in the awkward canter of this world. Fire, wheels, built homes—this was a civilization, a people. Hermann wondered if they had writing, and if he could be taught to read it.

They led him past the huts to the center of town, where many mulefa gathered around him with interest. He could hear the ones who had brought him explaining in their musical tones, and wondered what they were saying. So began the strangest week of his life.

* * *

The mulefa were a lively and orderly society, and they were eager to fit him into it. Every day was a whirlwind of teaching and learning, careful demonstrations, and slowly but surely improving linguistic communication. The mulefa spoke with a combination of words and trunk gestures, which Hermann began to imitate with his arm. This worked well enough, and he soon had a basic vocabulary of everyday objects and activities, even if abstract ideas and the grammatical structure were still beyond his reach.

As a people, they were the _mulefa_ but an individual was a _zalif_. Like humans they had two sexes and most lived in monogamous couples. There were a few kids in the town, kids being those under ten who did not yet use the seedpod wheels. Hermann kept an eye out for same-sex couples, but could not actually tell the difference between the sexes on sight; it did not seem to have much bearing on their roles either.

Atal the young she-zalif took him along on her duties. Their first project was home repair—there was a disused hut near the river that they wanted him to stay in, but they had to restore it first. So they taught Hermann how they built: a circle of vertical wooden beams, coated with a wattle-and-daub mixture, and a roof of thatched straw. This straw had to be replaced often, on all the houses, and they were excited to discover that Hermann could climb up on the roof and do it much more quickly (they could not climb). He was not the quickest climber by human standards, but he felt a warmth at being useful to them in this way.

When they were not working on the hut, Atal was teaching him about fishing, which was her main duty. He helped with fishing in the river, and some out by the ocean he had seen on arrival. In the heat of the afternoon, they would sit in the shade and repair the nets or weave new ones, and talk. The mulefa had to work in pairs, weaving the twine between their trunks. At first, Hermann was excited to show how he could do it by himself, perhaps even faster than two, because he had two hands. But he quickly realized the social and emotional value of their teamworking policy, and from then on he worked with a partner. This was also the best time for conversation, and as Hermann’s vocabulary grew, he wrote down as many words as he could.

As fascinated as he was by their differences, he was still hesitant about examining the physiology of his hosts. They had no such shyness about him. They were fascinated by Hermann’s strange autonomy, his trunkless face, and especially his hands. With their trunks, which had two prehensile projections as deft as his fingers, they examined his numerous digits and joints. He demonstrated for many enchanted mulefa how he tied a knot or handled his pocketknife. One afternoon Hermann dug a coin out of his rucksack and did the sleight of hand tricks he had learned as a child, to the delight of the mulefa kids. The children were also very interested in his shiny metal cane, the mulefa having no metalworking. Hermann realized one day that they viewed his cane as a wheel, a necessary tool for human transportation. It was logical, to them, for two legs did not seem stable without a support.

He tried to show that the cane was man-made, not a natural growth in harmonious evolution. _Of course it is built,_ said Atal, finally realizing what he was trying to say. _Nothing like this grows._ She turned to a zalif friend and said something to him, and he replied—Hermann caught the words _maybe_ and _wood_ and _craft._ Atal turned back to Hermann. _Would you like to make a stick from our wood? It is tough—it bends but does not break._ Hermann gladly agreed.

The next day, a zalif named Anku took him to one of the many groves they maintained. This part of the forest had smaller trees, which the mulefa used for wood and sap. He took Hermann to a pile of felled saplings, drying out in the sun. With much gesturing and half-communicating, Anku advised him in picking one.

Back in town, Anku showed him his curved stone blade, specialized for cutting and carving this wood. He demonstrated the whittling for Hermann, and then let him try. Hermann cut the bark away and whittled, over the next few days, until the stick was skinny enough. The handle was a severed, twisted branch at the top—it was this irregularity that had made them choose this sapling. When that was done, Anku showed him the lacquer they made from sap. Many layers made a shiny, durable surface. With various oxides, they could make the sap dull or matte, or even tinted. Hermann became interested in a strange quality of the transparent lacquer—it doubled things, the same way as Iceland Spar. He asked Anku if they had any clear lacquer with no back, and Anku showed him a small block. Indeed, it split the rays. Hermann held his hand behind it and watched two left hands tilt through the glass. Over the next few days, he painted and gently sanded ten layers of transparent lacquer onto his new cane. Through the doubled shine, the wood grain became as dense as a fingerprint. 

The cane was beautiful, with a nicely twisted handle and a perfectly balanced weight. This small project raised many questions for Hermann. He had been there two weeks, but still had a limited understanding of the mulefa’s place in this world, and of their history. They maintained the grazing herds, the fish, the fruit trees; they were a conscious part of their ecosystem. It seemed they maintained the wheel-pod trees as well, but he did not understand how. The trees were too large to harvest for lumber, and the seedpods were not food, they were just transport. How did their seeds spread, then?

He also had a limited understanding of his own role, his own journey. He was not certain how long he should stay among these people, learning their ways. To be sure, he wanted to stay—stay for the foreseeable future, learn as much as he could, complete his dictionary and his evolutionary picture. Stay away from the Cave, the grinding illogic of the hunt for Shadows. In the drifting period before sleep, he felt instinctively that he was in the right place; when he was awake, his mind told him he only _wanted_ that to be true.

Something was still missing.

* * *

Unexpectedly one day, Hermann got an answer to one of his questions: how the wheel-pod trees were planted. An adult was rolling through town when with a squelching _crack_ her seedpod broke. Hermann hurried over, but she was not hurt or even surprised. She said she had been waiting for this for some weeks. Her seedpod had been starting to get pliable. She offered it to him, and using both hands, he pried it open and poured out the seeds. They were round and flat, reminiscent of pumpkin seeds, but as large as a milk bottle cap. He helped her collect each seed, and bring them to the storehouse of seedpods, where the caretaker of that storehouse took them. These would be carefully planted, he explained.

That evening, Hermann watched Atal doing her daily wheel maintenance with much closer interest. So this was how their ecosystem balanced: the trees dropped their impenetrable seedpods, which the mulefa softened until they could be planted. But they could not be softened without the wear of riding them, which was impossible without the roads. He found it exceptionally surprising that a three-way interdependency could co-evolve, and was not sure he understood it, but he was not an evolutionary biologist. He watched Atal examine the rim of her seedpod for wear, and considered the many-worlds theory. Possibilities, branching into new universes. He had only seen three worlds, but accepting the theory as correct, it made some sense. This unlikely world existed because many failed versions existed in parallel. Perhaps in one world the volcanoes had not created such perfect roads, and the seedpods had grown with weak enough skins to propagate on their own. Perhaps in another, the mulefa claws did not grow so perfectly perpendicular and support their leg musculature so well, and they could not ride the seedpods. Mulefa children could not ride the wheels until they were about ten. Then they became part of this cycle.

At his prompting, Atal tried to explain the interdependence between the wheel-pod trees and the mulefa. They depended on each other equally. She pointed to the depression in her wheel, indicating he should touch it. He rubbed it with his finger, feeling the slippery oil again, fragrant and almost frictionless. He did not think he understood completely, but she seemed to be saying the interdependence came down to the oil. _It is the center of our thinking and feeling,_ or maybe _of all thinking and feeling—_ and the young ones couldn’t use the wheels because they could not absorb the oil. Did she mean that literally? Or did it mean understanding? Hermann tried to ask, but their conversation moved as slow as usual, and he was left with more questions.

But that was the stuff of his life. He found the questions frustrating but fascinating, the mystery branching and branching before him, too many iterations for him to ever travel down each one.

* * *

It was at the end of his second week that Hermann began dreaming again. Normally he was not a man to interpret such things as signs, but he had been sent into a parallel universe by a supernatural force and his frame of reference was a little shaken. To his instincts, this read as a bad sign.

He dreamed of a fleet of white sailboats attacking the shore, storming the town in the form of enormous swans. He dreamed of a shadowy figure, sometimes with a wolf-like shape beside it, stalking the blue prairie. He dreamed of fire consuming the whole trunk of a wheel-pod tree, clawing its way up until the tower of flame stretched higher than the eye could see.

The sailboat dreams became nightly until the unthinkable happened. They came true.

He was kneeling on the roof of someone’s house, repairing the thatch, when he noticed white shapes out at sea. They got larger with shocking speed, and when the déjà vu hit, Hermann thought, _Am I dreaming?_

“My god,” he said aloud.

The zalif below was picking up some reeds to pass to him.

 _Hermann,_ he said. _What are you seeing?_

Hermann tore his eyes away from the white sail shapes, which were moving unmistakably for the river mouth. How to say it? _Tall, white, many, moving fast,_ he signaled desperately. He was awake, but the nightmare horror gripped him.

But the zalif knew exactly what he meant. He whirled around to trumpet alarm to his town. In a moment the alarm spread, and the whole town was gathered in the center. Hermann watched in fear as the boats reached the river and began to come ashore.

 _Hermann! Come!_ Atal called. _Tualapi! Tualapi!_

“But...” They were coming. He scrambled down.

As the tualapi approached Hermann realized they _were_ birds, just like his dream—but they were massive, snow white with strong black legs and those beautiful wings, one in the front, one in the back. The flock moved up the bank and towards the town with malicious, cohesive grace, like a fighter jet formation.

The rest of the town was hurrying to the road, climbing onto their wheels and beating the ground to take flight. _Come, come!_ Atal was calling. Hermann finally reached her. He climbed as fast as he could onto her back and already she was pushing off with her feet. They flew away up the highway behind the rest of the town.

Holding on as best he could, Hermann turned back to look at their town. The tualapi had almost reached it. There were almost forty of them. They seemed to entertain the idea of a chase for a moment, but gave up, their legs not so fast on land.

So instead they sacked the town. With their powerful beaks they beat against the buildings, stabbing into doors until they broke open. They flung food out the doors and onto the street, breaking open sacks of grain and seed and fruit. With snarls and growls devoured whatever they could, tossing the rest in the dirt. It was the work of minutes.

When they had eaten, they destroyed all else they could. They found the seedpod storehouse and tried valiantly to destroy those, but they were too tough. The mulefa around Hermann shivered and murmured with worry as they watched them hurl the seedpods to the ground, peck and stab and scratch—all to no avail. Frustrated, or delighting in the destruction, they rolled some into the river. Atal moaned, watching.

In their final act of vileness, the flock squatted over their destruction and voided their bowels. Hermann gazed in disgust as they waddled away, leaving pools of green and white all over the heaps of wood and thatch, the smell wafting up the hill. In a moment they sailed downstream and back to the sea from where they’d come.

Angry and upset and above all concerned, the townsfolk rolled back downhill. _We build again,_ Hermann said to them. _I help._ But they were most concerned about the seedpods. There had been fifteen in the storehouse—the tualapi had flung all but two out to sea. Hermann gazed anxiously through his binoculars, and spotted a wheel on the sandbank in the riverbend.

He hurried down to the river and, seeing no alternative, stripped to his underwear and swam across with a rope. The mulefa watched nervously on shore. They never swam, always taking care to keep their feet dry even when fishing. He reached the sandbank, where he found not one but five seedpods. He strung them along the rope, fastened it to his waist, and swam back with them floating alongside. They thanked him profusely, and anxiously helped him get warm again.

That night, round the fire, they explained.

The tualapi attacks were becoming more frequent and though, yes, they could rebuild, it was the loss of seedpods that troubled them. Years ago, there had been many seedpods from plentiful trees. The cycle of life had held the mulefa and their trees in prosperous orbit. Something had gone wrong, somehow— _good disappearing from the world,_ it seemed they said—and the wheel-pod trees had begun to die. All their care and attention was doing nothing to stop it.

Hermann sat with this for a moment, feeling their anxious despair, their fear for their way of life. Then he tried to explain about his dreams. The mulefa word was _night-picture,_ and they took them seriously. _I saw night-pictures_ , he said. _Tualapi. Many nights. I did not understand._ Surprised, but interested, the mulefa asked him to share his dreams in the future. Hermann had some misgivings, but these were their beliefs, not his, so he did not feel it wrong to put the dreams in their hands.

They did not have long to wait.

* * *

The assassin crept through the trees, ducking behind flying buttress roots. In his hand, there was a long stick. Hermann realized it was a rifle. He struck out, but the assassin was already on him, crushing his windpipe. _Where is the girl,_ he hissed. Hermann gasped silently, unable to answer. He raised an arm to strike Hermann with the back of his hand, and Hermann saw a shimmer of metal on his finger—a ring—when he brought it down, Hermann saw a cross before it struck him in the mouth. _The girl!_

When Hermann woke, the shadow still seemed to crouch over him. It followed him all morning. The cross ring was an especially obvious and unwelcome bit of symbolism from his subconscious, he felt. But he dutifully reported the dream, trying his best with the details. He did not know “ring” so he pointed to the metal band on a married zalif’s horn and then to his finger. They hummed and discussed, thanking him for telling them.

That afternoon, while weaving, Hermann tried to explain his disinclination to trust dreams to Atal. Roundaboutly he explained his work as a scientist and his studies on dark matter. As he got into the story, of the research, the skulls, the girl, the Cave, and the communication with the Dust, he felt a strong twinge. It was again that feeling that something was wrong—that he was in the right place, but that something was amiss. This was a feeling too abstract to trust, yet he wished he had brought his equipment, something to study, anything.

Atal caught his meaning much better than he expected. _Yes, we know of this_ and she said a word similar to _voice_ , meaning, Hermann guessed, consciousness. _We call it... light._

 _Light?_ Hermann repeated uncertainly.

 _No, not light,_ Atal replied. She said the word again, more slowly. It sounded like _sraf. It is like the light on the ocean at sunset, in small ripples, the gold shimmer. We call it that name, but it is a make-like._

 _Make-like_ was how they expressed ‘metaphor.’

Hermann said, _This... sraf? It is not real light, but you call it that because it looks like light?_

 _Yes,_ Atal said. _All mulefa have this. You have it too. It was how we knew you were like us, not like the grazers or the birds or the lizards, who do not. Even though you look so strange and deformed, you are like us, because you have sraf._

Hermann’s mind was racing. They could _see_ it? Shadows? But they called it "light"—just another difference in their species’ outlooks. _Do you know where it comes from?_ he asked excitedly.

 _From us, and from the oil,_ said Atal, meaning the oil from the seedpod wheels.

_From you?_

_When we are adults. But we would not have it without the oil from the wheels._ Atal explained, _When we are old enough to use the wheels, we absorb the oil through our claws. It began thousands of years ago, when the first zalif hooked her claw through the seedpod and was awoken. This gave us memory, wakefulness._

_How did it happen?_

_One day a creature with no name discovered a seedpod and began to play, and as she played, she saw a snake curl through the hole and the snake said—_

_A snake spoke?_

_No, of course. It is a make-like. In the story, the snake said, ‘What do you know? What do you remember? What do you see ahead?’ and she said ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing.’ So the snake said, ‘Put your foot through the hole in the seedpod where I was playing, and you will become wise.’ So she put a foot in where the snake had been. And the oil entered her blood and helped her see more clearly than before, and the first thing she saw was the sraf. She was so delighted that she wanted to share it at once with her kindred. They discovered that they knew who they were, they knew they were mulefa and not grazers. They gave each other names. They named themselves mulefa. They named the seed tree, and all the creatures and plants._

_Because they could see,_ said Hermann.

_Yes. And so would their children, because as more seedpods fell, they showed their children how to use them. And when the children were old enough to ride the wheels, they began to generate the sraf as well, and the sraf came back with the oil and stayed with them. So they saw that they had to plant more seedpod trees for the sake of the oil, but the pods were so hard that they seldom germinated. So the first mulefa saw what they must do to help the trees, which was to ride on the wheels and break them, so mulefa and seedpod trees have always lived together._

This was fascinating of course, but Hermann’s mind had grabbed on to the seeing question. He had never thought there was a way to _see_ Dust. How did the mulefa do it? He knew something about optics, so if he could design a lens, perhaps...

Before he could continue this line of thought, a knot of anxious mulefa rode up to them.

 _Hermann,_ they said. _Something has been found. You must come._

Riding among them on the saddle they had been engineering for him, Hermann flew out of town. They took him past a wheel-pod forest, across a stretch of savannah, towards a herd of grazers. Their nerves were contagious. They reached a herd of grazers and set him down gently. Hovering behind, they followed him through the shuffling animals. There, a foot above the grass, was a window. Lying in front of it was a large dog, and next to it, on his back, was a man.


	3. The Assassin

Water. On his face. _Fern?_ No, that was water, on his face, waking him up. Could he breathe? Breathing seemed to not be happening as automatically as usual. And someone was pouring water on him. He blinked his eyes dazedly open. A face swam above his foggy glasses. He did not recognize the face but it was frowning.

He sat up with a gasp. “Hey—” he said, or tried to say. Many confusing sensations were happening—he was really hot, his hands weren’t moving, his face was wet, and his mouth—oh, my god. Was he gagged?

“Heh,” he said angrily, trying to say hey to the foggy man on the other side of his glasses. “Wha is this?”

Fernweh growled close by.

The man turned to someone he could not see and said something in another language. Where the hell was he? He needed to see. He moved to take off his glasses and discovered that the reason his hands weren't moving was that they were tied together.

Fernweh growled louder.

“Who are you?” said the man, turning back to him. 

“How a I apposed to answer?”

The man reached forward and he flinched, but he was just untying his gag.

“Thanks,” he said dryly. “Where the hell am I? I can’t see a thing.”

“That’s quite alright,” the other man said just as dryly. “Tell me who you are.”

“Tell _me_ what the hell you think you’re doing.”

The man shifted. “I need to know who you are.”

“My name is Newt.”

“I know that,” said the man snappishly. “Your pack says ‘Newton Geiszler’ on it.”

“Where is my pack?” said Newt. “I really cannot see.” He couldn’t even see Fern—his hood was blocking his peripheral vision. “This is ridiculous. You fogged up my—”

A hand flew towards his face and snatched his glasses off. Fernweh barked.

“Great. That’s much better,” said Newt to the blob formerly known as a man.

“Shut up, please,” said the blob, doing something. “Or better yet, tell your wolf to be quiet.” His glasses abruptly returned to his face, clean, and Newt blinked back into the world.

They were in a den of smooshed-down grass, so tall he could not see over it. It was bright and colorful under a sunset sky. Cattle sounds were coming from nearby, but Newt could see no one other than the annoyed man. Fern was behind him somewhere, still growling low in his throat.

“He’s not a wolf, man, he’s a coyote, and he’s...”

Newt was still looking around, looking for something. He realized what with horror. This man had no dæmon.

He scrambled up to his knees, but could not get away because alas, his legs were tied too. He hoisted himself against his pack and leveled his eyes with their captor.

“Where’s your dæmon, man?”

“My what?”

Newt’s mind was racing. He was twisting around as best he could, making sure. No, no dæmon, no snow. They had been in the tundra yesterday. They had found the window. They had really crossed over. This was it. Another world.

A world where people had no dæmons.

Because this man was a whole man, not a bereft, severed man. There emotions aplenty on that bony face: namely anger, suspicion, and uncertainty.

Hermann watched “Newton Geiszler” get his bearings. He had tied him up before waking him, but now he was regretting not searching his pack first. Well, there was still time for that. The fear he had felt on seeing the assassin, passed out in the grass, had turned quickly to anger, then uncertainty. He was still hesitant to trust a dream.

And his uncertainty was rising fast now that the man was awake. This man’s manner was extremely un-assassin-like. Hermann’s hesitation punctured his righteous anger, deflating it into annoyed frustration.

The man’s manner was not helping that.

He was small and scrappy, mostly hidden in thick furs, with thick-lensed glasses and a few days of beard growth. He was extremely sweaty, and his pack was bizarrely large and lumpy in all sorts of strange places. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse but shrill, like a car with squeaky brakes.

His most assassin-like feature was his mangy black wolf—coyote?—and Hermann had been too nervous of waking it to tie it up. But when it woke at the same moment as Newton, it only snarled. It would not touch Hermann. 

“Listen, man,” said Newton, “We’re just really lost. We’re not dangerous at all. We absolutely come in peace. If you could just—”

“I will be the judge of that,” said Hermann. He leaned forward and jerked the pack from below Newton’s elbow. The man tried to grab it, and the dog lunged, snapping its jaws around a strap. Hermann yanked it away.

He began opening the outer pockets.

“Hey!”

“I still have this,” said Hermann, holding up the gag. “When I’ve determined you are no threat—”

“Threat?” said Newt incredulously. “How in the name of—”

“What could have given me the impression? The impression you were a threat?” said Hermann acidly, looking up from the bag. “Oh, I don’t know, perhaps your rabid wolf?”

“He’s not rabid! That is so rude,” Newt said, forgetting his bind again and trying to put a hand on Fern. He made a frustrated noise. “He’s my dæmon. If you had one like a normal person, he would have kicked its ass.”

“You aren’t doing anything to lower your threat level,” his captor told him, stuffing a packet of crumpled maps back into one pocket and opening another. He had an English accent, but it sounded like it wasn’t his first language, and his voice was nasally. It was already starting to grind on Newt’s ear.

“What are you doing?”

“Exactly what it looks like,” Hermann said, pulling a crumpled handkerchief out of the pocket, “I’m—”

He broke off, staring at what was inside the handkerchief.

“What?” said Newt. He tried to see. The look on his captor’s face was not good.

Hermann lifted a handkerchief, wrapped around a ring. A ring with a red cross in a little square.

The man looked at Newt. Newt stared back. Fernweh was silent beside him.

“That’s not mine,” Newt said finally.

Where before had been only aggravation, the man was staring at him with real fear and anger now.

“You—”

Newt lunged suddenly, making for the ring. He didn’t really have a plan, it just seemed like the thing to do. He pushed off his heels and launched himself at the man’s hand. In a second they were grappling, and an elbow was shoving him off, a hand was gripping both his wrists with a surprising strength, Fern was barking, and then he was swung sideways onto the ground by his wrists, landing on his elbow—but not the grass—

_Crack._

“Oh, God!”

Hermann recoiled in horror. It was the unmistakable snap of breaking bone. In slamming Newton’s wrists down he had slammed his forearm against a rock.

“Oh God,” he said again, not letting go but gripping Newton’s wrists tighter than ever. He lifted them both up to sit. He had to look—

Newt felt something go very wrong in his arm but instantly and obligingly his brain disconnected. He went right into shock. He could not feel anything in his left arm below the elbow. Ah. Perfect.

“Ah,” he said. “Perfect.”

Fernweh was barking his head off.

“Oh my god,” the man said. He didn’t seem to know how to apologize, but regret was written all over his face. Adrenaline had flooded Newt’s brain, and he was feeling very emotionally clear. He didn’t know what this guy’s problem was, but he was certainly easy to read. He stared at Newt with panicked eyes, like he wanted to ask him what to do. It felt like the first time they had really made eye contact. Newt smiled dumbly. Words weren’t really happening for him right now. That was fine.

The man seemed to come to a decision. “Come with me,” he said. He pulled Newt up, not un-gently, and when they stood, Newt saw where they were.

They were on a vast blue prairie. Right next to them was a herd of creatures.

They had diamond-shaped bodies.

The prisoner gasped, and looked at Hermann with his mouth open.

“It’s them!”

Hermann looked back at him in incomprehending horror.

“It’s _them!_ ”

If the ring was not enough proof, this certainly was. Over his vehement protests, Hermann untied his legs and then helped him onto the back of the zalif he had ridden there. He tied Newton by his ankles to the stirrups of his own saddle. He helped another zalif take the enormous pack, and then moved to tie the coyote, but it snarled and snapped and would not let him near.

“Don’t you touch him,” said Newton, coming out of his nonsensical babbling.

“Then he’ll be left here,” snapped Hermann.

“He’ll follow us, idiot,” Newton said.

Hermann climbed onto Atal’s back. She was nervous of the whole thing. The mulefa were not combative, and he doubted they had any occasion to take prisoners in recent history. _Dangerous person,_ he told her. _I saw him in my night-picture._ He unfolded the handkerchief and showed her the ring. _The same._

She and her compatriots conferred for a second, then agreed, and they began to move out.

Without his saddle, it was the same long, uncomfortable ride he had taken almost a month before. He kept looking over at Newton in the darkening night. The man seemed to have gone into absolute shock. He was staring at everything, the road, the wheels, the landscape, and especially the mulefa themselves, with a face of fish-out-of-water astonishment. Or perhaps it was fear. Or physical pain. Hermann felt terribly guilty, but also terribly apprehensive. He was almost nauesous with the mixture.

They reached the town after nightfall. Other townsfolk came up to inquire about the new human, but they were taken aback by his state of pain and his tied wrists. He was not really speaking by this point. He just looked at everyone with wild eyes, like a man trapped in a dream. The kids tried to touch his dog, but it growled and they scurried off. The dog had run the whole way after them, keeping pace, somehow.

No one was happy about keeping him prisoner, but they acknowledged the prescience of the night-pictures and unhappily agreed. They brought him to Hermann’s hut. As two mulefa untied his prisoner, Hermann watched, equally miserable. This was a peaceful town. They were bringing something violent and dangerous into it. He felt they, the two men, were accomplices in a corruption.

Inside the hut, Hermann barred the door and lit his fire. The dog lay down stiffly beside it. He sat Newton on his bed, which was little more than a low table. Like his stool it was specially made, for the mulefa of course had no use for either stools or human beds. He pulled the small table up to the bed, and sat down on the other side.

“Arms,” he said.

Newton put his arms on the table.

His captor untied his wrists. Newt stretched and rolled his right wrist around, but his left stayed limp. The forearm itself was feeling very puffy and hot inside his sleeve.

“Take off your coat,” Hermann said. He was tearing up strips of fabric. His heart was thumping and he didn’t know why.

Newton obeyed without a word. He hadn’t said anything since arriving. He winced as the left sleeve came off.

“How does it feel?” Hermann asked.

“Hurts,” said Newton.

Hermann couldn't stop himself from giving the man a look.

“You’re the one who broke it,” said Newt, shrugging. He didn’t actually feel that upset—he was too exhausted. Fernweh’s long run had tired them both out, and the shock was wearing off. The dull ache in his arm was getting shaper by the minute. Pretty soon he was going to pass out or start yelling.

“I’ve got to set it,” the man said.

“I don’t even know your name,” Newton said. “You snap my bones, and you won’t even tell me your name? That’s pretty cold.”

He was putting one purposeful hand on the inside of Newt’s wrist and one on his elbow. Newt remembered how strong they were from their scrap.

This was going to hurt.

“Hermann,” said the man apparently called Hermann. “Dr. Hermann Gottlieb.”

“Ahh, Gottlieb?” said Newt. “You German, Hermann?”

Then he screamed.

After the arm was set, Hermann tied it tightly between two short sticks—Newton passed out for a moment, then came back—looped another piece of fabric around his shoulder, and tied the sling. He had done this once before, when Martin had broken his arm on a hike. It still turned his stomach.

Against some half-lucid protestations, he gave him two ibuprofen (“What the hell is this?”) and put him in the bed. Newton was certainly not going anywhere, but Hermann kept his ankles tied anyway. He took up the pack, meaning to search the rest of it, but it was too dark. So he took his sleeping bag and slept on the grass outside, his back against the door.

* * *

The next morning while Newton was still asleep, there was a town meeting. It was still difficult for Hermann to express himself, but he managed to communicate his own hesitance. He told them his reasons for mistrusting the man: his recognition of the mulefa, as if he was on a mission to find them; his ring; and the poison Hermann found when he finished searching his bag that morning.

 _I come from an attacking species,_ Hermann said, using the word for attack, because they did not have a word for war that he knew. _Our world has much conflict. I do not want to create danger for this world._

 _Can this not be solved by greeting others trustingly? Creating a bridge?_ one of the elder mulefa asked.

 _I hope so,_ was all Hermann could think to say.

 _We agree to keep him tied if you see fit,_ the same elder reported to him after they had conferred. _But we will treat him with courtesy. And we will revisit this question in a week. If he has shown no threat, he will be set free._

Hermann returned to the hut, where he found Newton sitting up with his legs over the side of the bed, struggling to untie his ankles with his good hand.

“Hey!”

Newton looked up as Hermann came in.

“Dr. Hermann,” he said, and returned to untying.

“Stop that,” Hermann said.

“Do you have any more of those capsules? This hurts,” said Newton, shrugging his left shoulder demonstratively.

“We need to talk,” said Hermann.

“Also do you have any food? I’m starved.”

“There are more important things—”

“Don’t know what could be more important than food, even in this universe—”

“Please!” Hermann struck the floor with his cane. Newton looked up again. Did they not know how to conduct conversations in Newton’s universe? By God. Hermann felt the same outrage speaking with him now as he had yesterday on the prairie.

“What?” said Newt after a pause.

“We have to discuss our situation,” Hermann said. He limped over to his stool and dropped onto it.

“I didn’t notice the cane yesterday,” said Newt. “It’s beautiful.”

Hermann looked at him with narrowed eyes, and didn’t respond to that.

“Yes?” said Newt after a moment.

“The mulefa—” Hermann began.

“Is that what these creatures are called? They’re intelligent, aren’t they? I can tell. My god, I never expected...”

“Please do not interrupt,” said Hermann. “They are called the mulefa. I’ve explained that you are an assassin—” Newton very clearly suppressed an urge to interrupt— “But they aren’t like humans. They aren't warlike. At all. They are not comfortable keeping you prisoner. Frankly, neither am I. I do not want you to be here. If you tell me what you know, who sent you, and how you got here, I think we can reach a release agreement.”

Hermann did not mention what he had found in his pack that morning. The thing that had given him the most misgivings.

“Am I permitted to speak now?” Newt said.

Hermann nodded.

“Okay. First and foremost. _I am not an assassin._ I don’t know what gave you that impression, besides, I guess, my dæmon, but since you don’t seem to know what those are, let me fill you in. He—” Newt put his hand on Fernweh, who was beside him on the bed, “couldn’t attack you even if he wanted to. He’s a dæmon—in my universe, every human has them. They’re like... an external part of your soul. Some people believe they _are_ your soul. They take the form of an animal but they’re as much you as you are. And in my world we _don’t_ touch another person’s dæmon.” He looked at Hermann severely. “Ever. Nor do they touch you. So in short: all bark, no bite.”

“I am beginning to think that’s your whole persona,” Hermann said dryly. “I’ve seen a lot of things these last weeks. I’m prepared to believe that you come from a universe where, for reasons apparently unknown, every human has a magical animal companion—”

“I do, and they do,” Newt interrupted. “Go on.”

Hermann gave him a look. “But yet they speak English, _conveniently_ ,” he went on. “In any case, your ‘dæmon’ is not why I believe you to be an assassin.”

“Why, then?”

“First of all, I found poison in your pack.”

“That doesn’t prove a thing,” Newt said. “I think everyone should carry some. Assassins and civilians alike.”

Hermann’s mouth twisted angrily.

“That’s not an answer anyway,” Newt said. “Because yesterday, you tied me up immediately. Before you searched my pack. I like to think my demeanor doesn’t scream ‘murderer.’ What’s the real reason?”

Hermann looked uncomfortable. “I had... advance information. A warning. A warning that a killer was coming.”

“And I fit the profile?”

“You’re the first human being I’ve seen in weeks. So yes.”

“All your information told you was that ‘a human killer’ was coming? Seems vague.”

“It told me the killer would be wearing a ring. Like the one I found in your pack.”

Newt’s heart sank. He glanced at Fernweh, and they shared a thought of regret. _Shouldn’t have stolen that ring off that dead Skraeling._

“Yeah, about that...” Newt looked back at Hermann. “It isn’t mine.”

Hermann looked unimpressed.

“Really,” Newt said. He winced. “We stole it. From a dead deacon.”

“Why?”

“The Church is powerful where we come from,” said Newt. “I thought it could be useful.”

“He was dead?” said Hermann. “How did he die?”

Newt shrugged aggressively, trying to cover his guilt. “I don’t know!”

“Seems convenient.”

“It’s the truth!”

“So you don’t agree to my terms, I take it.”

“Terms? Terms? Oh, the terms where I tell you who sent me to kill you? Here’s your answer then, man, _no one._ I’m _not_ a killer.”

“Then what are you? How did you get here? Why did you recognize the mulefa?”

Newt scowled at him. “I don’t owe you any answers. You tied me up. I’m innocent.”

Hermann made to stand, then hesitated. He glanced at the table, where he had laid out the suspicious items he found in Newton’s pack.

Newt followed his look. “What?” he said.

“There were some other items in your pack I... wanted to inquire about.”

Newt looked back at Hermann. “I’m not telling you shit.”

Hermann stood and walked to the table. He picked up the strange gyroscope, and held it up for Newton to see.

Newt looked at it impassively, then at Hermann. He said nothing.

Hermann stifled a spike of irritation and put the strange object down. He held up the poison.

Newton shook his head. “Like I said. Just poison.”

Hermann shook his head incredulously. “Why you would think that a sufficient explanation I have no...”

“It only _looks_ bad,” said Newt, unable to keep quiet. “It’s just a precaution. Where I come from, there’s a lot of political unrest right now. I’ve never even used it—look! It’s full.”

Hermann saw that it was indeed full. He put it down.

“And last, this...”

Hermann picked up the bundle of yarrow stalks wrapped in the cloth, and their accompanying book:  _The Book of Changes._

The prisoner kept still. Was he really going to make Hermann say it?

“This is the I Ching, is it not?”

Newt shrugged. “I guess.”

“Do you know how to use it?”

Newt shrugged again.

“Why did you bring it?”

“I brought lots of things.”

“I saw that.” Hermann held up a big claw bone he’d found in yet another pocket. “Lots of strange, suspicious things.”

Newt looked away and shrugged again. The I Ching was not for this guy. He didn’t need to say more.

For Hermann’s part, the I Ching was the most confusing, perhaps unsettling, thing he found in a pack full of very weird things: instruments of all sorts, apothecaryish bottles, a bizarre antique camera, more than one animal bone. The I Ching did not solve the presence of the ring; it made things worse, because both conflicted absolutely. They confounded the two equally unbelievable sources of information he had on this journey—the Dust and his dreams—making them both wrong or both right. That was intolerable. He recalled again the words of the Dust.

_Trust the I Ching._

_You will meet a friend. You must trust him as well._

Was this him?

Hermann doubted it, looking at him. He did not feel friendship—he felt mistrust, annoyance, guilt. Deep at the heart of it, deeper even than his guilt, Hermann felt a strange complicity with the man, as if they had made some mistake together. As if they had both broken his arm, both hurt the mulefa’s peace, not just Hermann. He felt responsible for him.

Hermann set the I Ching down. He went to his own things and found more ibuprofen, which he gave to Newton.

“I’m going to destroy your poison,” Hermann told him.

“Go ahead, Hermann,” said Newt, saying his name with contempt. “I’ll keep on not killing you for as long as it takes to prove you wrong.”

* * *

The next few days passed quickly. Considering their enmity at first sight, it was surprising how everything settled. Newt spent the days in the grass, tied by his ankle to a small tree in front of Hermann’s hut. Fernweh, the coyote, stayed close by and quiet. Hermann had been wary of the coyote “dæmon” at first, then confused. It was quite a shock the first time he heard the two of them speaking to each other—Fernweh _spoke_ , English! (”What did you think, that he was just a pet?” Newt said. “No, but you told me he was an external part of your soul,” Hermann said, “So I had no reason to believe him capable of intelligent thought.”) The coyote was black and mangy and harsh looking, and much as Newton annoyed him, Hermann could not reconcile the “soul” explanation. Newton was many things, but he was not predatory or mean.

Hermann was continuing with his work, of course, his town duties and his Dust lens. The lens was slow and finicky work, and he had not yet found any solution. He only had time in the evenings, and those were often taken up by his prisoner.

But by the time a couple days had passed, Newton did not feel like his prisoner. He felt like a talkative houseguest. When Hermann went home to his hut, it was like someone had made him to pet-sit their precocious parrot. Newt was everywhere, asking questions, answering none of Hermann’s. He was intractably curious, asking about the mulefa, their customs, their evolution, their language. Hermann caved by the second day and gave him his dictionary, which Newton studied intently and absorbed unfairly fast.

Newt did not ask many questions about Hermann, seeing as he was unwilling to share anything about himself, but he did learn that Hermann was a scientist. He then asked probing questions about Hermann’s “methodology” until Hermann was forced to, (a.) conclude that Newt was also a scientist, or had been at one point, and (b.) tell him he was a physicist, not an evolutionary biologist.

Newt’s reply to this was curious. He raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise.

“Evolutionary biologist...!” he murmured, looking away. “Is that a real area of study in your world? I wish I could study that openly...”

Hermann frowned incredulously.

“Excuse me—does no one in your world study _evolution_?” Hermann said.

Newt looked back at him. “I told you, Hermann, the Church controls everything.”

The way he had said it made Hermann think he _had_ studied it, just not openly. Perhaps he was a renegade scientist. This romantic notion occupied Hermann’s mind for the rest of the day as he fished.

When Hermann was away, Newt stayed under the tree, reading the dictionary and practicing out loud, taking some notes of his own in the back of the notebook, or, most annoying, talking to the townsfolk. His alien-ness was so complete that no one seemed bothered by his “prisoner” status. They were as curious about him and his coyote as they had been about Hermann, and Newton was more openly curious about them. His outgoing manner was more suited to their society than Hermann’s reserve, and his chattiness had him conversing with the mulefa within a week—at least twice as fast as Hermann had.

When Hermann, greatly annoyed by this speed, asked about his interest in the mulefa, Newt shrugged and said he studied them.

“You _study_ them?” Hermann said. “But you’ve never seen them. You’ve never been here.”

“No,” said Newt, smiling infuriatingly.

“Then how could you possibly.”

“Untie me, and I’ll explain!”

Overall Newton was not as upset about his broken arm as he was about being tied up. Anytime he wanted to stop a conversation or divert Hermann’s attention on a point of disagreement, he would demand to be set free. Hermann would refuse. Newt would shrug. Hermann would storm off. It was a stalemate. Hermann asked about his journey: How did you get here? Untie me, I’ll tell you. Hermann asked about the I Ching: How do I use it? Untie me, I’ll show you. There was nothing but tension when they were together; yet when Hermann was away from him, he was bored and preoccupied.

One evening, they sat in the front yard as the sun set. Atal had joined them for dinner, and Newt was now trying to ask her about seasons. Neither he nor Hermann knew the word for season, or if this planet even had them. He was gesticulating wildly and drawing diagrams, and Atal was following intently.

Hermann sat half-listening, mostly focusing on his binoculars. He had disassembled them with his glasses repair kit, and was now experimenting with the lenses. He shone a penlight through the magnifying lens, onto the small mirror. He tried moving the mirror closer, farther. No, still nothing.

He realized Newt was talking to him.

“Hermann, listen to this. No seasons as far as I can tell. She doesn’t even know if other planets orbit their sun.”

Hermann looked up. Atal had left, and the fire had died down to embers. “Orbit the sun?” he said. “They don’t think the sun orbits them?”

“Yeah, they’re already heliocentric. I can’t figure out how!” Newton seemed delighted by this gap in his knowledge.

“Interesting,” was all Hermann had to say. He looked back at his lenses.

Newt watched him work for another minute. His fingers moved with such precision. “What are you doing?”

“None of your concern.”

“You tell me about your work, I’ll tell you about mine?”

“Not interested, Newton,” Hermann said, flipping a lens over.

“Come on.”

“You already told me that you study the mulefa,” Hermann said. He looked over his glasses at Newton. “Obviously that’s a lie, so why would I believe anything you told me now?”

“Not a lie,” Newt said. “Perhaps a mistake. I can’t conduct my research to my usual expansive, comprehensive standards these days due to, oh, being tied to a _tree_ and having only one arm.”

“So your usual apparently expansive, comprehensive research involves the mulefa,” Hermann said, “Then you are a biologist?”

“Naturalist,” said Newton. “Close.”

“Are there biologists on dæmon earth?”

“I’m guessing biologists study living things?”

“Correct.”

“Then yes, there are, we’re just called naturalists.”

“There were naturalists on my earth as well,” Hermann said.

“Were?” repeated Newt.

“Yes, the name ‘naturalist’ became obsolete as the discipline became biology, an _actual_ discipline _,_ ” Hermann said crisply, “Instead of just groups of college-educated men traipsing around the woods drawing pictures.”

“Tough break for those biologists,” Newton said, stretching. “Running through the woods drawing pictures on my college degree is the best part of my job.”

Hermann gave him another over-the-glasses look.

“What’s that gyroscope for?” Hermann asked. “Unusual instrument for ‘naturalism’.”

“It’s not mine, actually,” Newt said. “It was a delivery,” he added before Hermann could ask why he stole it.

“A delivery? That was your mission in the tundra?”

Newt nodded.

“And what does it do?”

“It measures.”

“Obviously. Measures what?”

“Dust.”

Hermann went still. He stared down at the penlight in his hand. He flipped it off.

“Dust? What kind of dust?” he asked. He tried not to let all his hope and interest enter his voice. He didn’t want to show it. He didn’t want to _have_ it. But from the way Newton said it, it sounded like Lyra’s Dust. Were they from the same world?

“Just Dust,” said Newt. Hermann seemed awfully interested all the sudden, though he was trying not to let Newt see it. “I don’t know what it is. No one really does.”

“How does it work?”

“Don’t know, Hermann,” Newt said. “I’m a naturalist, not an experimental theologian.”

Hermann almost rolled his eyes at the _Star Trek_ joke, then realized it was not one. Because Newton had no idea what _Star Trek_ was. Surely. There could not be television in his backwards world. But then, he seemed to know about the mulefa. What else could he know?

The sun had gone down now and the fire had died out. Hermann looked across the firepit at Newt. His face was the color of marble in the sourceless glow of nighttime.

The naturalist gazed back at him.

So Newton knew about Dust, then. Hermann knew he would not say more, not until he untied him. He was getting the feeling that he would, soon, despite how much he did not want to, rationally. He was getting a lot of feelings and instincts lately for things he could not possibly know. And Dust was following him. Despite his discomfort with its existence.

That conversation, with the Cave consciousness—with the “angels”—had genuinely shaken him. It had shaken his belief system, or rather his nonbelief system. A former almost-priest, his anti-theism was hard-won.

He looked away from Newt and did not ask any more questions. He was still too stubborn, when you came down to it.

* * *

A few days later, disaster struck.

The mulefa settlement was close to a grove of wheel-pod trees, and Hermann lived on the side of town closest to it. In the late afternoon, he was shelling nuts with his neighbors for dinner when they heard a distant rumble and crash. His ears interpreted it as thunder, then he looked. Clear sky.

The mulefa around him had heard it too.

_Do you think?_

_No... not another._

Upset, two of them began to put on their wheels. Hermann asked if he could come, knowing what had happened, but afraid to ask. They said yes, and he hurried back to his hut to get his specialized saddle. It made holding on much easier, and more comfortable for his hip.

“What’s going on?” Newt called from the grass as he hurried back out of the house.

“Nothing,” Hermann said, hurrying away. His neighbor was waiting.

They rumbled over the grass—there was no highway this way, and over-the-grass riding was slower, but still faster than walking. No one spoke. The forest loomed larger and larger on the horizon until they were upon it.

The sun was setting behind them as they entered the grove. Hermann climbed down and all three of them walked, spreading out. He felt the same reverence he always felt among the wheel-pod trunks. But today there was an air of foreboding and rot among the thick dark shadows that lay behind each trunk.

The other zalif trumpeted from a few yards away. Hermann and his neighbor hurried over.

 _Fallen,_ the zalif crooned to his friend.  _Fallen..._

It was true. One of the great trees had fallen. By luck, it had fallen between the others, not against any. But that was small consolation.

It felt horribly wrong to see it like this, horizontal in half-darkness. It was like a beached whale. They were at the crown, the roots hundreds of yards away, deep in the grove. The leaves were all yellow, shivering in the still air. Even on the ground, the crown stretched yards and yards overhead. Hermann could see a few green seedpods up there—now they would never mature.

The news had already spread when they returned to confirm it. The town was as devastated as after the taulapi attack, perhaps more. They were convening the town council to discuss, but the air was thick with hopelessness.

Hermann went home heavy with empathy and frustrated with helplessness. Newt was in the front yard in the darkness, sitting alertly up. Fernweh stood when Hermann approached.

“Hermann, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

Hermann reached him and sat stiffly on the ground. His hip and back were sore from riding.

“What’s wrong?”

“One of the wheel-pod trees died,” Hermann said heavily. He explained what they had told him before Newt came—that despite their best efforts, the trees were dying, and they had no idea why. Hermann sighed and rubbed his forehead, closing his eyes. “I don’t know what to do. I must be here to help, but I’ve no idea how.”

He felt a hand rest on his back.

“You ‘must’ be here to help?” said Newt. “You don’t seem like a fate kind of guy. Aren’t you just here? Of your own free will? Or possibly, by accident?”

Hermann lifted his face from his hands. He’d never explained, had he?

It was silly. He didn’t know almost anything about Newton. Yet he felt he knew it all, and that everything he knew, Newt knew as well.

“I never told you about my research,” said Hermann, “did I?”

“Just that you were a physicist.”

“I studied dark matter, Newton,” said Hermann. “Dust.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he said grimly. The hand disappeared from his back. “I never believed in it.”

“How could you study what you didn’t believe in?”

“I wanted to disprove it,” Hermann said. “It didn’t fit... I wanted to be the one who made it fit.”

“No such luck?”

“The opposite. My research partner and I built a comp—a machine, to measure Dust. We found that it was more concentrated on objects that humans had made, works of craftsmanship. It was attracted to consciousness. Stop me if you’ve heard this before.”

Newton didn’t stop him. Hermann didn’t know why he was telling him all this—it seemed redundant. He pressed on, speaking into the darkness.

“My colleague called this consciousness. He believed the particles knew what they were looking at. I was not so sure. Until one day, when a little girl came to our lab. She hooked herself up to the machine, and by God, Newton, she was so in tune with it she could make it draw her pictures. She communicated with it like a person. She told me I could too.

“So I rewrote the code, and I spoke to it. She was right. She was right...”

He broke off, remembering.

“The Dust wrote to me. It told me to come here.”

“Come _here_?”

“Not here, but it told me where to find a window into another world. It said I had a mission. I wandered on until I got here.”

“Why did you stop?”

Hermann turned at last to look at Newton. Light from the direction of the sea glinted off his glasses, hiding his green eyes.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I wanted to. But I never made certain I was supposed to stay here. I didn’t know how.”

“There you go again, ‘supposed to,’” said Newt. “I don’t see why you only have one course. You can decide to go, if you want.”

“I _don’t_ want to go,” Hermann said. “But I want to do what the... what the Dust assigned me.”

As he said it, he realized how thin it sounded. Had he been taking orders all this time from an invisible voice? What kind of atheism was that?

“What did they tell you, exactly?”

“‘Beware the assassin,’” Hermann recited, “‘Trust the I Ching. You will meet a friend. You must trust him as well... You have been preparing for this journey as long as you have lived. Your work here is finished.’”

Newton was silent for a long moment.

At last he said, “Should we try the I Ching?”

They sat on the floor of the hut by firelight. Newt directed Hermann how to use it (having only one arm, he could not do it himself). Once the coins had been tossed and the yarrow stalks had been arranged and rearranged, they looked up the answers in the book.

_To be kind to the prisoners of war will not do you harm._

_Friendship from outside predicts auspiciousness._

_Wait in prayer. Something will be obtained, showing greatness and smoothness.  
Prediction is auspicious—you will get a way to cross a river._

That was it then. Across the firelit hearth, over the carefully arranged stalks, Hermann looked at his would-be assassin, his so-called prisoner.

“I’m going to untie you.”

Newt nodded.

Hermann undid the long mulefa rope from his ankle. It would have been hard for Newton to un-knot with one hand, but not impossible, and over the past week Hermann had often wondered why he hadn’t. As he was prying open the last knot with his fingers he realized why: consciously or not, Newt had been waiting for Hermann to trust him.

That night Newt slept inside, on the floor. He lay awake, thinking of what Hermann had said, for a long, long time.


	4. Sand and Lacquer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fellas is it gay to have a scientific breakthrough together?

Newton wanted to use his new freedom to learn about the mulefa by what he called “immersion,” which Hermann understood to mean “wandering around uselessly.” Newt claimed he had important inquiries to make, and said in fact “wandering” was not inaccurate—non-directional exploration was just his investigative style. Hermann was unimpressed. “We are guests here, not anthropologists,” he said. “We’ve got to help where we can.”

“Ah, I’d love to, Hermann,” said Newt with a sigh of regret, “But...”

He indicated his arm in its sling and winced exaggeratedly.

“I’m afraid that won’t get you out of anything,” Hermann said with satisfaction. “The mulefa have trunks. Your single-handed status is, if anything, normal here.”

“But it’s not my dominant hand!” Newt protested.

Twenty minutes later, standing knee-deep with their pants rolled up, unhooking fishing nets, Newt informed him that was fine, because he had trained himself to be ambidextrous.

“What luck,” said Hermann, showing him where to unhook the net. Each clasp was held in place among the rocks by a hook; the long net had to be unhooked, then unclasped to be opened.

“This is better immersion anyway,” Newton said, looking around. “This way I finally see how they work and live, up close.” He shook his head, grinning. He had been bluffing about not wanting to work, but Hermann could tell how excited he was. Fernweh, too, who was eagerly snuffling around the reeds nearby. Hermann was starting to see how the coyote expressed Newton’s moods.

“‘Finally,’” Hermann repeated, stepping over a rock. “Explain.”

“Hm?” said Newt, fishing around in the water for the next hook.

“You said you would tell me about your work when I untied you,” Hermann said. “You are untied.”

“Oh, you want to know how I knew about the mulefa, from before?” Newt said, looking back up at Hermann over his shoulder. Hermann raised his eyebrows. “Like I said, I study them,” Newt said. He found the hook and tugged the net out of the water. “It’s kind of a long story,” he said as he stood, pulling the section of net up so Hermann and his two functional hands could undo the clasp.

“If you don’t—”

“All right, all right!” Newton said. “Relax, Dr. Shortfuse.”

Hermann undid the clasp and together they moved on towards the next one.

“Like I told you, I’m a naturalist. I study mammals.” He picked his way over some small rapids. They were getting to the deep part now. “Among other things, I did some archaeological work in the North—mostly, my contacts in the field would send me samples.”

“North of what?” Hermann asked.

“Northern Europe,” Newt answered. “No interrupting.”

“But you are American,” Hermann said, watching him roll his pants higher in a futile effort to keep them dry.

“I grew up in New Amsterdam,” Newt said, switching to the other leg. “I moved to Oxford to be a Scholar. Did that for almost twelve years. Didn’t much care for it.”

They continued to the next hook.

“The mulefa don’t like getting their feet wet, do they?” said Newt, bending over to feel around for the next one. “How do they normally pull this net?”

“This net is new,” Hermann said. “Built by me, because I can navigate the water.”

“Helpful of you. Not that many fish in it, though,” said Newton. “Do you think it’s because of their balance issues?”

“That the mulefa avoid walking in water?”

“Yeah.”

“No,” said Hermann dismissively. “And they don’t have balance issues. Four legs is much more stable than two.”

“Sure, standing still,” Newt said, standing up, without the net. “But not walking. You’ve seen how the kids wobble around.” He wobbled demonstratively.

Hermann put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. It did not work. “A four-legged structure is still more stable,” Hermann insisted, “Even if it moves strangely. _I_ am more steady because I have three.”

Newt kept bobbing. He shook his head. “No, man, I don’t think they have the same developed inner ear as us, _because_ they’re naturally more stable. I think the moving water makes them nervous.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Hermann said. “Even if it isn’t in their inner ear, they obviously have a highly calibrated sense of balance, because they _ride_ on _wheels_ at _high speeds—_ without a sense of balance there would be no way—to perform the turns that they—will you stop—”

Newt grinned.

“It isn’t about balance, Newton! It’s about the oil.”

“Seedpod oil?” said Newt. He stopped.

“Yes,” said Hermann exasperatedly. “Please, will you get the net.”

Newt bent back down, feeling for the clasp. “They don’t want it to get washed off their feet? Is that what you mean?”

“That’s my hypothesis.”

Newt made an interested ‘Hmm’ sound.

“You were telling me about your career,” Hermann said. “Honestly I cannot imagine how you could have ever been an academic. Talking to you is like talking to an 8-year-old birdwatcher.”

Newt pulled the net up and stood. As Hermann unclasped it, he resumed: “No need to be rude. Where was I? Archaeological digs. I had a contact in the North who got his hands on a very unusual sample, one he thought I would be interested in. It was pretty hush-hush. Naturally, I was intrigued. This was about four years ago,” he added. Hermann nodded and they started moving to the next hook.

“So he sends the sample, Professor Newton Geiszler, care of Jordan College—”

Hermann stopped. “Jordan?”

“Yes, Jordan, that was my university,” Newt said, also stopping exasperatedly. “Are you going to keep complaining about how slowly I talk, _and_ keep interrupting me?”

 _Jordan._ Hermann racked his brains. He had heard that before... “Lyra!”

“Lyra?”

“Jordan College, that was in the universe where the little girl came from—Lyra, she said she grew up there...”

“My God,” said Newt. “I think I know her! Lyra Belacqua?”

“She said her name was Lyra Silvertongue.”

“That sounds like Lyra. She's trouble,” Newt said, breaking into a grin. “I tutored her for a few weeks at Jordan—me and every other Scholar. We would set up a lesson, she would arrive an hour late, and then her dæmon Pan would just goof off behind me for the whole lesson... She’s a good kid.”

“I didn’t see a dæmon, when I met her,” said Hermann uncertainly.

“Kids’ dæmons are different,” Newt explained. “They can shapeshift—change into anything they want. When you get older, they settle on one form. Pan was probably in her pocket being a mouse or something small, to hide.” Hermann had about sixty questions about that, but Newt was looking away, shaking his head in amazement. “Lyra... I can’t believe it. That’s bats. What are the odds?”

“I don’t know that odds come into it,” said Hermann with existential discomfort.

Newt’s eyes flicked back to his. They were still standing in the middle of the river.

“Oh, not the fate thing again, Hermann.”

“The odds are _astronomically_ small,” Hermann said heatedly. “This was obviously engineered in some—”

“Come on,” said Newt, rolling his eyes. He turned around and resumed walking. “Why defend the fate explanation if you hate it?”

“I don’t understand what’s going on here Newton, but I don’t like it,” Hermann said, following.

“You’re just mad,” Newt said. “You’re mad you don’t get it. You can wait for an explanation to present itself, you know. It’s called the scientific method...”

Hermann’s cane slipped on a rock and he grabbed Newt’s shoulder.

“Whoa! Careful, man,” said Newt, grabbing his elbow.

“Thank you,” said Hermann. Newt made sure he was steady and let go.

They continued to the last clasp.

“So, where was I?”

“You were waiting for a mysterious package.”

“Right.” Newt bent down. “I get the sample. It’s a deer skeleton, preserved under the ice for a few hundred years at least. Only—” He got the hook out and pulled the net up. “—Only when we put it together, it isn’t any deer I ever saw.”

He held up the cord while Hermann undid the clasp. “No?”

“Diamond-framed body,” said Newt, shaking his head. “No spine. Nothing else like it in the fossil record. Absolute anomaly.”

Hermann finished opening the clasp. He wondered what the fossil record looked like in a world where evolutionary science was suppressed.

“Now, I know you’re wondering,” Newt said, “What does the fossil record even look like when the Church suppresses evolution studies?”

Hermann frowned at him.

“Aha, you _were_ wondering!”

“Obviously.”

“Well it looks pretty spotty, and here’s why. I didn’t tell anyone what I had. It was just me and Fern, and our research assistant. This little diamond deer blew us away. We hardly slept. But not two days went by before the Church knocked on our door, asking kindly to take a look.”

“No one else knew?”

“Only my dig guy and my assistant. But the Church has ears everywhere, Hermann. And they do not like evolutionary anomalies.”

“I expect not.”

They were both pulling the net by its end and walking it, in a big slow arc, back to shore.

“I was already pretty unpopular with them, due to a certain paper I had published a few years before about chimpanzee-human commonalities,” said Newt. “Not to mention the whole being-Jewish-thing. After the first veiled threats, I realized they were going to suppress my work or snatch my skeleton. So I only had one choice—make it as public as I could.

“I started giving sensational interviews to every newspaper, gazette, tabloid, magazine, pamphlet writer I could find. I took photograms—a lot—of every bone, sent those off to the papers too. I made a plaster cast. I made a backup plaster cast. I petitioned Jordan to display the diamond deer prominently in their main building. Jordan said no thank you (the Jordan higher-ups are all Church busybodies—oh well). I made a fool of myself giving a very public presentation on it, just to get some headlines.”

Though this story contained new information, it was in no way surprising—Hermann felt like he already knew it. He pictured Newton kicking up a fuss to get in the public eye. He could picture it quite easily.

“It got a little buzz. Enough so I got a nickname in the press. Enough so that a disappearance would look suspicious. That bought me some time. I studied the hell out of that skeleton for almost a year, preparing my paper. Then came the hard p—”

“What was the nickname?” Hermann interrupted.

“The what?”

They reached the shore and dropped the net in the grass.

“Your nickname. In the press.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Newt said. “It’s not even a good one.”

“Newton, if you aren’t prepared to be honest with me—”

“You just want to tease me with it—it won’t work!” he said, holding up his finger. “No, no Hermann. Because first of all, you would _love_ to be a renegade scientist, doing work _so_ transgressive that you got _notoriety_ for it, so don’t even pretend you aren’t _extremely_ jealous. And because second of all, it isn’t a good nickname! So just drop it, all right?”

They spent the rest of the morning fishing. The mulefa were much more comfortable with Newt as a visitor than a prisoner—he had long dispelled any mistrust with his enthusiasm and aptitude. Hermann and Atal showed Newt how nets were hauled in, how the fish were sorted and which were returned to the water, and how those left were gutted. Newt was especially interested in the gutting, of course, and Atal showed him the special way the mulefa did it with one “hand.” After an hour or two of enthusiastic dissection, he spent the midday break examining the fish skeleton.

In the afternoon they helped with re-thatching some roofs. The mulefa were glad to have another roof-climber, but they were confused about where Newton’s cane was. Didn’t all humans need them? For stability? Newt looked at Hermann, then said, _Only sometimes._

 _Such strange, stick-like creatures,_ one zalif commented to her friend. _A wonder they walk at all._

* * *

That night they sat on the grass after their evening meal with the neighboring family. Newt was taking notes on fish anatomy in the notebook, making reference to a real live dead one that was starting to smell. Hermann had begun the notebook as his dictionary for the mulefa language, but Newt seemed to have decided it was a resource for research collaboration.

Speaking of which. Hermann cleared his throat.

“Newton, we need to talk.”

“Sounds ominous,” said Newt, not looking up. “I’m kind of in the middle of this...”

“It’s too dark and you know it.”

“I can listen and draw. Just talk to me.”

Hermann shifted to a more comfortable sitting position.

“In light of the experiment with the I Ching, and the message from the Dust consciousness, I think we can agree—”

“Bold assertion, already doubting where this is going,” Newt said.

“—I think we can _agree,_ ” Hermann pressed on, “That though we find ourselves in an extremely unusual situation, we’re in it together. And it would be best if we started working together.”

Newt looked up at him.

“I thought that’s what we were already doing.”

Hermann gave a clipped sigh. Of course: what he felt the anxious need to clarify, Newton already took as a given.

“I mean on everything.”

Newt put down his pen. “You mean your binoculars thing,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You’re going to tell me what you’re doing,” said Newt.

“Yes.”

“Because you need my help.”

“No—”

“Oh, say it Hermann, you need my help.”

“I do not. I _want_ your help. I believe you will have valuable things to say.”

“Aww. You bet I will.” Newt leaned closer. “In fact, I already know what you’re doing.”

“You do not.” Hermann meant it to sound like a shutdown, but it came out sounding plaintive.

“I do! You want to make a Dust lens.”

Hermann frowned.

“I’m right, aren’t I?”

Hermann was still silent, racing to think of a way to continue the conversation without verbally confirming that he was correct.

“The mulefa—”

“Ah! Knew I was right.”

“—call it _sraf._ Atal compared it to the light seen on the ocean at sunset. This phenomenon arises from the splitting of the light rays. I know something about optics, so I’ve been trying to make a lens that will split rays in a similar way...”

“Interesting,” said Newt. “So the mulefa know about Dust too?”

Hermann explained what Atal had told him, about the oil and the consciousness of adulthood.

“So they can actually _see_ it, huh? Wow,” said Newt. “That’s bats. Well listen, here’s my take. If there was a way to split the rays and see Dust with glass, the crazy Church scientists from my world would have figured it out. If they can see it, it must be something local. Maybe some chemical. We can’t dissect a mulefa’s eyeball, so that’s out. It’s a shame we don’t have any Iceland Spar...”

It clicked. “The lacquer!” Hermann almost shouted.

“Which?”

“Look—” He reached behind him and grabbed his cane. He laid it across both their laps. “No, damn, it’s too dark. But you can feel it.” Newt did so. “The lacquer they helped me put on this cane comes from the sap of a smaller tree the mulefa cultivate. Anku showed me a block of it. When the lacquer dries transparent, it splits rays just like Iceland Spar. I remember thinking the same thing when he showed it to me,” Hermann said excitedly.

“Then let’s try it!”

The next morning, Hermann and Newt went to talk to Anku. Newt was already better at the language, to Hermann’s chagrin, so he explained their idea, with Hermann “helpfully interjecting” several times. In the end, Anku figured how much lacquer they would need. It was a lot. For that much, they would have to tap the trees and harvest it themselves.

Newt followed the demonstration eagerly and got to tapping the trees. It was already late morning, so Hermann went to attend his duties. Newt did not mind. He and Fern roamed around the grove while the sap buckets slowly filled up, exploring nooks and examining wildlife.

“It’s so amazing here,” Newt said, watching some bumble-birds, as he had christened the bee-sized hummingbirds. “It’s like we walked into a dream. A dream with very consistent internal logic.”

“Isn’t it surprising, with everything else, that trees are the same?” Fern said.

“It’s surprising that _anything_ is the same,” said Newt. “You saw those fish. Why would this world have evolved fish so similar to ours?”

A bird swooped and Fern barked, and chased it a few yards.

“I’m curious to see those big, evil swans that Hermann mentioned,” said Newt.

“We’d better hope we don’t see them,” Fern replied, trotting back.

“I guess,” said Newt, in a non-conciliatory tone. “We’re getting along better,” he said pensively, of Hermann.

“ _We’re_ not,” said Fern stiffly. “He never talks to me.”

“I don’t think he knows how,” said Newt.

“I find it rude,” Fern said.

“You can’t find it rude. He doesn’t have our customs.”

“I can consider rude whatever I consider rude,” Fern said.

Newt laughed at that. “I think you don’t like him because he’s like you,” he said.

“I don’t _dis_ like him,” said Fern.

“I think I would dislike him, only he _does_ remind me so much of you,” said Newt. “He does get annoyed with us sometimes, though. Sometimes I feel like he’s a fussy librarian whose stacks we’ve invaded.”

Fern chuckled.

“He’d be less high strung if he had someone to talk to, like we do,” Newt added.

“Maybe,” said Fern, sounding unconvinced.

“I know, there’s high-strung people with dæmons too,” said Newt. “But still. It’s healthier. It’s about processing. I feel like he has some stuff he isn’t processing.”

“What do you think she would be?”

“Don’t know... a cat?”

Fern made a noise of faux disgust. Newt laughed.

“You think his dæmon would be female, then?” Newt said.

“Maybe,” said Fern non-committally.

Newt shrugged. “Can we check the taps?”

“We just checked, man,” said Fern.

“Ugh! You’re no fun. Let’s go help Hermann.”

The sap ran so slowly that it took two days to get the volume they needed. Then they had to boil it down, boil it down, until the liquid was reduced almost 80%. It was a thick yellow-green liquid, but after many coats, it would dry in a transparent shade of amber.

The next thing they needed was a flat surface. The mulefa had no use for metal, and no way of mining it anyway. So they found a large rough board, a little larger than a record sleeve (“A what?” said Newt, and Hermann gave up trying to place the man’s universe in a comparable technological timeline to his own), and took turns sanding it down to flat. They used the same rough sandstone the mulefa used to sand their houses.

Sanding took another day, in between work. Newton seemed to find the work very satisfying. After he wiped the dust off with a wet cloth and dried it in the sun, he eagerly started painting. The first layer took about three minutes to paint on, and would take several hours to dry. Newt sat staring intensely at the board.

“Newton.”

“Hm?”

“What are you doing.”

“Well I was just thinking, if this lacquer has Dust in it, then it’s conscious, then it can sense me staring at it. So maybe it’ll hurry up.”

Hermann shook his head, to keep himself from laughing. “It doesn’t have Dust _in_ it, it might allow us to _see_ Dust—completely different—”

Newt looked at him. “Oh, is _that_ what we’re doing? _Thank_ you for explaining, Dr. Doesn’t Know What A Joke Is.”

Hermann rolled his eyes. “Go help with dinner.”

Newt took care of lacquering and sanding, because he found the process so satisfying and because Hermann still seemed skeevy about it. Newt discussed it with Fern as he lightly sanded one layer of lacquer before painting on another. They concluded Hermann was both attracted and repulsed by the Dust mystery, for personal reasons they had yet to uncover. “It couldn’t just be scientific skepticism,” said Newt, to which Fern replied, “He comes from a world without dæmons. There could be many things we consider normal, that he would consider mystical.”

They lost track of how many layers he painted on and smoothed out. After a few days, the lacquer was almost a half centimeter thick. Hermann and Newt argued about whether to add more—Newt wanted to, Hermann said it wasn’t necessary.

“Hermann, how can we look through it like a lens if the wood is blocking the back? We need to make it thicker.”

“We can cut the wood off the back,” Hermann said. “You just want to keep painting.”

Newt made a face but handed the board over. Hermann set about prying the wood off with his pocketknife.

It was slow, finnicky work. Hermann was just as engrossed by it as Newt had been with lacquering. He worked by sections, prying out the larger pieces with his knife, then the smaller splinters with the tweezers. When he looked up, two hours had passed. Newton was watching him work.

“What?”

“Nothing—sorry,” said Newton. “You were just really into it.”

Hermann couldn’t tell if he was being made fun of, so he went back to it.

“I meant that in a good way!” said Newt, but Hermann ignored him.

By the next day, Hermann had finished getting most of the wood off. They had to sand the remaining bits, and then polish that side as well. They took turns sanding again. When it was Newt’s turn, Hermann held it steady in place of Newt’s left arm.

It was late afternoon, the third or so round of sanding. Newt looked at Hermann, who was frowning at the board as he held it for Newt.

“What?”

Hermann looked at him. “Nothing,” he said automatically.

Newton raised his eyebrows. What was it about him that made Hermann so snappish? He felt like he had lost the ability to conduct a normal conversation.

“Excuse me. I’m feeling tired.”

Newt went back to sanding.

“I confess I was wondering... about Fernweh’s name.” Hermann glanced at the coyote, who was gnawing on a stick a few feet away.

“Why don’t you ask him about it?” said Newt.

Hermann looked at Newt in confusion, then back at the dæmon.

“I... wasn’t certain...”

“It’s all right, man,” said Fernweh. “It’s not rude.”

“Oh.”

“If you had a dæmon, he or she would have a rapport with him already,” Newt said, shifting his angle and sanding vigorously. “He’s me. If you talk to me, you talk to him. It’s cool.”

“Very well,” said Hermann, trying not to be weirded out by talking to a dog. The dog was Newton. This was fine and normal. “I’ve been curious about your name.”

“What about it?” The dæmon had a warm, deep voice, not at all like Newton’s.

“It’s German,” said Hermann. “It means a longing for faraway places one has never seen—the opposite of homesickness. I’ve heard it translated as ‘far-sickness’.”

“Yes,” said Fern. “Newt’s parents were German.”

“So it’s the parents who name the dæmon as well?”

“No, generally it’s the dæmons of the parents.”

“Good thing, too,” said Newt, still sanding. “My mom wanted to name him Darwin.”

“After the scientist?”

“No, the heretic.”

Newt stopped and looked up at Hermann. They frowned at each other.

“Don’t tell me,” said Hermann, holding up a hand. “I don’t want to know the graphic details of Charles Darwin’s public execution in your universe.”

Newt shrugged and resumed.

“My mom was always starting trouble,” said Newt. “As if my dæmon being male wasn’t going to cause enough problems.”

Hermann frowned again. “Is that unusual?”

Newt looked up again. “Oh, yeah. Most people’s dæmons are the opposite. Women have male dæmons, men have female. Same-gender dæmons are rare. So, naturally, they’re frowned upon.” He shrugged. “Your turn.”

Hermann took the sandstone and the board and shifted his knees to make them flat. He started sanding.

“It’s seen as deviant,” Newt explained. He shook out his tired hand, then lifted it up. Fern padded over and Newt scratched him between the ears. “People hate that. Most people can’t tell right away, because he’s so pretty.” He smiled wanly at his dæmon, who nudged his hand for more scratches. “Usually they can’t tell until he speaks. But that kind of thing gets around once people find out. And it’s not like we’re going to hide it.”

“Hmm,” said Hermann, keeping his eyes intently on the sanding. He was trying to fit this into his understanding of where Newton came from. It made sense. But it also gave him a twinge of real sadness, like a thorn in his left lung. “That must have been difficult,” he said belatedly, looking up. He was not good with consolation. “Humiliating or... troubling, I imagine.”

But it did not seem to bother Newt. He shrugged. “We were fine. It’s just who we are.”

Hermann considered the naturalist, now scratching his appreciative dæmon under the chin. Something clicked into place about his abrasive manner. Newton didn’t care what people thought, and aggressively so. More than that, he embraced it. He liked putting them off. Hermann recalled his story about the press. Did it leave the two of them lonely? Hermann wondered if Newton’s unusual dæmon was the reason for that abrasiveness, or just an illustration of it. Would he be this way if he had been born with a normal dæmon? Or did inheritance dictate that such an unusual person had to have such an unusual dæmon?

“You know, when we were kids, we goofed around plenty,” said Newt reminiscently, still scratching the appreciative Fern. “We were just like Lyra and Pan. You notice people noticing, of course, but you still have fun. Sometimes he turned into a little pterrodact just to annoy the priest at our church. We always thought he would settle on something silly, like a parrot.”

Hermann gazed at him sadly. He had stopped sanding.

“Maybe he would have, if he hadn't been born a boy,” said Newt. “But we needed to protect ourselves. We grew up.”

Newt knew Fern didn’t mind hearing that. They had talked it over plenty of times between themselves. But it wasn’t the kind of thing he told others. People were so judgey. He felt oddly nervous to look at Hermann, whose gaze he could feel burning a hole in his cheek. Strange then that he should tell Hermann, who was just about the judgiest person he’d ever worked with.

But Hermann couldn’t be judgey about this when his whole context for it was Newt and Fern. Newt thought about that. As far as Hermann was concerned with that world, Newt was it. The whole world.

He looked up. No, it was not a judgmental look. Hermann looked really sad.

“It’s okay, man,” said Newt. “That’s life. You are who you are, and people don’t like it.” But his voice came out quieter than he wanted.

* * *

They finished sanding that day and next day began polishing, under the direction of the lacquer expert in town. She showed them how to buff it until it was as clear as glass.

“Look at that,” said Newt proudly, as they held it up between them. He held it up so the setting sun shone through it, then looked at the warm light it cast on the ground. “Like stained glass.”

“It looks like amber,” said Hermann.

Newt looked at him, confused.

“Hardened sap from pine trees,” Hermann said. “Do they not have have amber on dæmon earth? It hardens into a sort of stone. Some of the crystals are millions of years old. They’ve even found insects in it from the age of the dinosaurs—there’s this film—”

Suddenly, Hermann was overwhelmed with how much Newton would like _Jurassic Park._ He had no idea of its existence. This fact horrified Hermann. He absolutely lost interest in the amber glass for a second, he was so focused on this. It seemed so terribly wrong—because usually, it felt like they had always known each other. But they had not. There was so much Hermann knew that Newt did not. So much it almost choked him.

Newt was looking with narrowed eyes at the amber glass. “I think I know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Electrum.”

“Is that what it’s called where you come from?”

Newt looked at Hermann. “Are you okay? You sound weird.”

“We don’t call it electrum.”

“Well anbar is what powers machines and lights in my world,” said Newt, lowering the glass. “That’s why I was confused. Anbaric bulbs, all that.”

“Electric...” said Hermann. Their eyes met. So many bizarre differences between them, Newt thought. The places they came from... yet so much was similar. Wasn’t that stranger? They called these two things by opposite names, but they were the same _things._ He wondered if Hermann was thinking along similar lines. Sometimes their thoughts converged, the same as their two worlds.

“Well listen, Hermann, I hate to put a damper this moment of cultural exchange, but I’m looking through our window and uh...” He held it up between them and raised his eyebrows at Hermann. Two superimposed Hermanns looked back, nonplussed. “I’m seeing split rays, but I’m not seeing any Dust. What’s our next move, Dr. Optics?”

“We need refraction,” said Hermann. “We need to bend the light rays. We need a second pane.”

“You want to make another one?” said Newt, lowering it. “This took like a week, Hermann.”

“No, we don’t have to make another one,” said Hermann, grabbing it. “We can split this one in two.”

“I don’t think so,” said Newt, not letting go.

“The glass was my idea, so I _do_ think so,” Hermann said, tugging. “I know how to do it.”

Frowning, Newt let go.

Hermann went inside and came back with his pocketknife and his metal hiking cane. He set the window on the grass, set the cane on top of it, and positioned it just past the halfway point. Sliding the knife along the straight edge of the cane, he scored the glass with his knife five or six times. Then he lifted the glass, laid the cane on the ground, knelt, set the glass on top of it, positioned the line directly over the cane, placed a hand on either side of the glass, and shoved purposefully down. The glass snapped cleanly in two.

Newt, watching, raised his eyebrows.

Wow. That was hot.

Hermann got to his feet, and held them both up to look at Newt. Nothing. No Dust.

“Ha,” said Newt, feeling turned on and annoyed about it. “Stupid idea.”

Hermann moved the two pieces farther apart, testing the focus, but nothing changed. He scowled.

“Do you want progress, or not?” said Hermann.

“Not if it means I’m wrong,” said Newt.

Hermann dropped his arms to his sides with a huffy sigh.

 

* * *

He was repairing nets with a zalif friend the next afternoon when he heard an approaching cry.

“Hermann! Hermann!”

Newton. Growing quickly louder.

He apologized to his weaving partner and stood stiffly up. Fernweh appeared over the crest of the slope. Newton appeared a second later, running and waving his arm.

“Hermann! Hermann, big breakthrough! Come quick! Quick!”

Newt turned right around and ran off, but Fern went slower, letting Hermann catch up.

“What’s going on?” said Hermann.

“Big breakthrough, I suppose,” said Fern. He wouldn’t say more, but his tail was wagging.

“So I was talking to Atal,” Newt explained back at the hut. “I was looking at her claws, because well—you know my diamond deer specimen?”

Hermann, still out of breath, nodded.

“Okay, so I brought the claw—you’ve seen it—”

“That’s what that claw is? A zalif’s _foot_?”

“No! Listen. I thought it was.” Newton’s words came tumbling over each other. “But it’s a different shape—it’s smaller and the lateral claw is a completely different proportion to the foot than Atal’s foot—I think it might be a grazer’s foot, but that’s not important, listen, that’s not what I need to show you!”

“What, then?”

“I got her seedpod oil on my hands. Then I picked up our glass, and got oil on it, and _look,_ Hermann!”

He held the two panes up between them. Newton became blurry and double, then in focus and singular, and there it was—flakes of gold light, shimmering down around his face.

Dust.

Hermann stared in openmouthed awe.

“We _did_ it!” said Newt, excited beyond belief. He was almost bouncing.

“We... It’s beautiful, my God,” said Hermann, watching the coruscations drift down around the naturalist’s face.

“It’s _everywhere_ , Hermann,” said Newt, wheeling around with his arms out so they were looking through the glass in the same direction. “Look...”

It was. Newt leaned close against Hermann’s shoulder so they could both see. The trees, the grass, the town, the ocean beyond... Everywhere they could see the Dust filling the air, thick as pollen in the springtime. It was not borne on the wind but instead moved the way it wanted, which was mostly drifting down except where it rode on purposeful currents.

“Look, look,” said Newt. He pressed on Hermann’s shoulder and turned them together so they could look at the knot of mulefa talking intently nearby. The Dust was thick around them like snowfall, as it had been around Newton. It swirled around them in currents of intention and thought.

“And the kids...” said Newt, turning them again to look at a young zalif child walking along. She waved her trunk hello at Newt, who called out _Hello!_ Hermann studied her through the glass and saw that though there was a bit more Dust around her than the empty air or the trees, it was nowhere near as thick as the cloud around the adults. It was full of little eddies.

“That’s what the Church fears,” said Newt in an undertone. “See that? Kids don’t have it, but adults do. What must that mean? Well surely it _must_ mean something sinful,” he said sarcastically. “As any matter of difference means, _surely_.”

Hermann watched the Dust fall, peaceful but purposeful. He was so enchanted he had forgotten not to believe his eyes.

“It’s real, man,” said Newt, shaking his head, voice awed. “It’s real and it’s beautiful.”

“Yes... it is,” Hermann murmured. When he looked at Newton, still pressed close to his shoulder, the golden dust seemed to still be on him. He seemed to shimmer in the late afternoon light.

“How’s that crisis of faith doing?” Newt asked, looking back at him.

Hermann blinked slowly, wondering absently if the Dust illusion would come off his eyes. “Seeing is believing,” he said, the words coming slowly. “I am a scientist... It would be irresponsible, and egotistical, to... ignore what was before my eyes out of blind loyalty to my own ideals.”

Newt looked at him, shaking his head. “But Hermann,” he said in a low voice. “That’s what you do best.”

Hermann shoved his shoulder with his own. Newt laughed, stepping away to keep his balance.

It was then they noticed that the group of mulefa were coming towards them. Atal was among them.

 _Atal!_ Newton said. _We did it! Because of you!_

 _You can see it?_ she said. _The sraf?_

 _Yes,_ they said.

 _Then you are ready at last,_ she said. _We have been waiting... You must come._

They exchanged a look. _Ready?_ said Hermann. _Come,_ she said, already turning. _Do not be worried. You will come to no harm. This meeting is long awaited._

* * *

Hermann and Newt followed Atal. All around them, the town was moving—mulefa came from yards, houses, down roads, rolling steadily in one direction. They moved not unlike the currents of intention in the Dust.

Everyone rolled towards a mound on the outside of town, one they had noticed before but whose use they had never known. It had a ramp on either side, and a large crowd, at least fifty, had gathered. Hermann took hold of Newton’s arm above the elbow to keep together in the flow of people. Newt put his hand on Atal’s back.

 _Atal, what is happening?_ he said to her.

 _Sattamax will explain,_ she said, shushing him with her trunk. _You must listen._

It was clear who she was speaking of—a large, eminent-looking zalif rolling slowly through the crowd. It parted respectfully around him. They could see that he was old, older far than any zalif they had met. Newt lifted the lacquer panes and saw a thicker cloud of Dust around him than anyone else, swirling and dancing with wisdom and intent. He and Hermann exchanged a look.

As Sattamax made his steady way up the ramp, the crowd stayed parted. Eyes flicked back expectantly towards Hermann and Newt, until they realized they were to follow. They walked slowly to the base of the mound, Hermann still holding Newt’s arm, and Fern trotting alertly behind.

Sattamax spoke. His voice was profound and colorful, and his trunk moved eloquently. The crowd was attentively hushed, and both men were still and rapt.

_We have all come together to greet the strangers Hermann and Newt. Those of us who know them have reason to be grateful for their activities since they arrived among us. We have waited until they both had some command of our language. With the help of many of us, but especially the zalif Atal, the strangers Newt and Hermann can now understand us._

_But there was another thing they had to understand, and that was sraf. They knew of it, but they could not see it as we can, until they made an instrument to look through._

_And now that they have succeeded, they are ready to learn more about what they must do to help us._

_Come here and join me,_ he said to them.

They made their way up the ramp, feeling many eyes on them. Fern led the way. Newt let Hermann keep holding him for support, his hand gripping his upper arm with its ever-surprising strength. He put a steadying hand under Hermann’s elbow until they reached the top.

It seemed right to speak—“You had better do it,” murmured Hermann, and Newt nodded, and began.

_We thank you. You are a kind and generous people, and you have made us feel like friends. We come from worlds of anger and madness, but here, you are at peace with yourselves and your surroundings. I admire it. I believe we have learned much already. We are grateful for your help in seeing the sraf, which we have long been searching for. We are ready to help you however we can._

It was well-spoken, certainly better than what Hermann could have done under all those eyes. He squeezed Newton’s arm. Privately he marveled at his composure.

Sattamax said _, It is good to hear you speak. We hope you will be able to help us. If not, I cannot see how we will survive. The tualapi will kill us all. There are more of them than there ever were, and their numbers are increasing every year. Something has gone wrong with the world. For most of the thirty-three thousand years that there have been mulefa, we have taken care of the earth. Everything balanced. The trees prospered, the grazers were healthy, and even if once in a while the tualapi came, our numbers and theirs remained constant._

_But three hundred years ago the trees began to sicken. We watched them anxiously and tended them with care, and still there were fewer seedpods, and some trees died outright, which had never been known. All our memory could not find a cause for this._

_The process was slow, but then, so is the rhythm of our lives. We did not know that until you came. We have seen butterflies and birds, but they have no sraf. You humans do, strange as you seem; but you are swift and immediate, like birds, like butterflies._

_You realize there is a need for something to help you see sraf and instantly, out of the materials we have known for thousands of years, you put together an instrument to do so. Beside us, you think and act with the speed of a bird._

Hermann felt something great shift inside himself with a fearful thrill A bird? A butterfly? Newton perhaps, but no one had ever compared Hermann to a bird. He had always thought of himself as dogged, plodding forward slowly but steadily. That this quality they singled out was one he shared with Newton, simply by virtue of sharing his humanity—it moved him. It made him feel he could do this, this incredible task in this strange new world. It made him feel that _they_ could.

Sattamax continued. _But that fact is our hope. Perhaps it is in the way you speak between each other. Perhaps it is the way you humans work together. Together, you can see things that we cannot, you can see connections and possibilities and alternatives that are invisible to us, just as sraf was invisible to you._

_And while we cannot see a way to survive, we hope that you may. We hope that you will go swiftly to the cause of the trees' sickness and find a cure; we hope you will invent a means of dealing with the tualapi, who are so numerous and so powerful. And we hope you can do so soon, or we shall all die._

The crowd murmured in agreement. Newt’s heart was thumping. Was he up to this? All those years in a dusty little office, writing papers no one read. All those months flying across the Northern snow, no one to look out for but himself and Fern. This was it. This was the journey the Dust had told Hermann he was preparing for.

He felt the weight of it descend on him like all the invisible Dust around them. Was _Newt_ prepared? Were the mulefa mistaken? He was a solitary person—a lone wolf. No one depended on him.

He looked to Hermann, anchored to him by his hand. Did he _want_ no one to depend on him, or was it just the historical reality?

Hermann was already looking at him. He saw the frightened look on Newton’s face. Hermann shook his arm bracingly. He nodded to him.

There was a confidence in his eyes with which no one had ever looked at Newt. He nodded back.

 _Mulefa, you put your trust in us,_ Hermann said, at last letting go in order to gesture to the crowd. _We are grateful. Together we will do our best. Now that we have seen sraf, we know what it is, and we will find a way to fix it. You are kind and generous with your trust and we thank you for it._

The crowd nodded and cooed their approval. As they descended behind Sattamax, the mulefa touched them gently with their trunks. They moved along with the crowd, streaming out into the darkening streets of town. Newt touched Hermann’s arm, awed and intimidated by what lay before them.

“Tonight,” he said to Hermann, “I’m going to tell you my story, and you’re going to tell me yours.”


	5. Knots

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG gay thank you to Haley for their help with the backstories in this chapter. Couldn't have done it without ya.

I became a Jordan Scholar at the age of 19. Before you ask, yes, that is young, even in my world. I became a student there when I was 14. Being a prodigy is not as fun as it looks. They never were quite able to stifle my insouciant _zest_ for life—though they did try. But it’s like Stockholm Syndrome, you know? The life of a Scholar was the only life I knew.

Further back? You want childhood backstory? That’s boring. Fine. Fine! But this means you have to tell me yours too. Oh, I’m _sure_ it’s boring. All right, listen up. Born. New Amsterdam. Jewish family. Mom was an opera singer, Dad was a piano tuner. The old story. I was found out for a prodigy by 5 and it was all private tutors and advanced classes from there. We still found ways to have fun though, right, Fern?

So, blah blah, Scholar. Teaching, researching. Mammals were my specialty. “Hmm, ironic, with the name, eh?” Quoth every joker I met at every party in my twenties. When we had time for that, which was rare. It was miserable there. Felt like you were paddling to nowhere, but at the same time, like you were drowning in work and running out of time.

Like I mentioned, I knew Lyra. She was my sometimes-student. I don’t think she even bothered to remember my name. No, not because of the nickname. No! ...Yes. No, I’m not telling you what the nickname was. Oh Hermann, you’re going to be so disappointed when you find out. It’s so bland. It's the most uncreative nickname. I’m going to draw this out as long as I can, just to heighten that letdown.

After a few years, I got into the prehistoric mammal business. Archaeology—lots of interesting bones up North. We started joining research expeditions, chipping away at the glaciers. Great stuff in there. It was a time of real excitement about the North. Everyone wanted a piece. In retrospect, I bet a lot of that money came down from the Church. They were covertly funding Dust research in the North. But wherever it came from, I got some of it.

We were lucky, because we never found anything big. I knew a guy who found a prehistoric man, perfectly preserved in the ice. Not a human—a pre-human. Neandro-what? Neanderthal? Is that what you guys call them? See, we don’t even have a word for that, you know why? As soon as that scientist let out a peep of what he’d found, he vanished. His neandro-man along with him.

So like I said, we didn’t actually find the grazer skeleton, it was sent to us. No, I don’t think it’s a zalif. I’ll do some more comparisons, but I’m almost certain. Will you please let me talk? I haven’t even got to the interesting stuff. It was sent to us by a field associate, name not important. But I met this associate through a different associate, a man named Stanislaus Grumman.

Stan is real interesting. I think you’d like him. Everyone likes him, I guess. He appeared on the academic scene ten years ago and made a name for himself as a Scholar, real fast. He just came out of nowhere, and suddenly, he was everywhere. But now, he’s a shaman—but like, an honorary shaman—he lives with the Yenisei Pakhtars but he isn’t Tartar by blood. Yenisei? You have no idea what I’m talking about? That’s fine. They're Northern Tartars. No?

I first met Stan when I was a student. I must have been...17? He gave a paper on variations in the magnetic pole, presented at the Berlin Academy. I watched him debate—I was in total awe. He was at Jordan for a few years and we became buddies. He was sort of a mentor. ...I had a bit of a crush, I’ll admit. He left Jordan to join the Tartars, oh, seven years ago now. But before he did, he gave me an important gift.

The I Ching.

Yeah, I know. He showed me how to use it. He said I might need it, but he didn’t act like he knew how or why. Then he just ran off to become a shaman.

So, back to the grazer skeleton. I know, you hate my storytelling style. I’m getting there. This is four years ago. I get it. Church threatens me. I kick up a fuss. Church backs off. Sort of. I start feeling all kinds of eyes on me. I’m still doing my research, trying to fit this bastard into the fossil record. No such luck. A year passed by and I got paranoid, like, what if I put this thing together wrong? What if it’s not a diamond at all? I disassemble it, reassemble it. No, I was right. (Of course I was.) I start studying other fossils—maybe it’s not a mammal, maybe it’s a reptile. No, no reptiles like that in the record either. No luck.

Thanks. My second year studying this diamond deer is winding down, and my book is almost ready. Oh, I was writing a book. Did I not mention that? Okay, okay, sorry. Yes, of course I’m writing a book! A monumental shift in Earth's natural history deserves a little more than a _monograph_ , I think. No, no one wanted to publish it. But I was trying my best, all right?

In the end, it was my fault. I got complacent. I thought that _because_ no one wanted to publish my findings, the Church would lose interest in them. Really, they were biding their time. Finally they swooped. I was accused of indecency before I knew what hit me.

I wasn’t about to go the way of Darwin. I packed my shit and—

Accused? What did they accuse me of? Oh. Gross indecency, like I said.

...No, I wasn’t seeing anyone then. They blackmailed an old flame into accusing me. When your dæmon is male, everyone already expects it anyway...

You know, I didn’t anticipate the Church going for my personal life—it was going to be either that or some shit about being Jewish—but I should have. I should have. I was too wrapped up in my work.

My work. That’s always been the most important thing about me, _to me_. I can never understand when it isn’t, to other people.

...

So. We're dishonorably discharged. We still have our contacts up North, though, so we hightail it out of England.

Exile had its pros and cons. We spent the next two years scurrying around the tundra. We wandered, got a dogsled and some training, did odd jobs for Tartars and witches and bears. And all the while, we had our ears to the ground, listening for talk about digs and bones. We were saving up for dig equipment of our own, and tracking down the site where the original diamond deer came from...

But wandering instead of working wasn’t a great fit for me. No, it was a great adventure and all, first adventure of my stuffy book-bound life. But I wanted a mission. A goal. Like I used to have. I think you can understand that.

So, it’s about a year and a half into our exile. We got a sweet gig with the bears—yes, the bears. Hermann, do you not have bears on your earth? No, forge bears, armored bears. Talking bears. Yes, of course they talk!! I’m limiting you to one question every five minutes.

So yes, the bears are intelligent. And they’re damn good blacksmiths. They live in a sort of loose kingdom in the North, above Lapland. They’re in a weird place right now, politically, which provided us a good business opportunity. The new bear king loves humans. He has one special human guest who needs lots of rare philosophical instruments. What am I? A human. What do I know all about? Philosophical instruments. We had this gig running errands for Lord Asriel (the human) for a few months, and it was frantic and hush-hush and honestly, pretty fun. Can I have another sip of that?

Thanks. So we’re on our way north to deliver this funky gyroscope when it happens. The sky splits open. We weren’t far from Asriel when he did it—maybe a day away. So we saw it pretty close. First, the most dazzling display of the Aurora you can imagine. Then boom, it was like the atmosphere was an egg and the sky cracked right open. Fog came pouring out. Thickest, heaviest, most maddening fog you can imagine. It concealed whatever was on the outside of that crack, swallowed up the whole North, and it did not clear. For days.

We made it to the nearest town. Rumors were wild. Everyone was saying it was the end times. We were pretty sure whatever had happened, Asriel had done it. I was still curious, but navigation was impossible—compasses going haywire, no sun or stars to steer by. And on top of that, there was the weather. Everything was melting. We were traveling by sledge and our dogs could barely get anywhere in the mud.

Still, that kind of thing never stopped me. By “that kind of thing,” I do mean “circumstances that should make my goal impossible.” We head out. We head north, or at least, we think it’s north. But it must have been somewhat east, because who do we run into, but Stan Grumman.

Stan didn’t have long to talk. Said he had a date with an aeronaut. He asked if I still had the I Ching. I said yes. He told me to use it for navigation. He said... Well, yeah. You won’t like this. He said I was on the right track, that my wandering was actually my “mission,” and that I had to deliver the I Ching to someone. And deliver myself. He gave me some very particular directions to find a window on the tundra. But he said it would take a few days, and when I got lost, to consult the I Ching again, because “only Dust” could be counted on.

So we did. We got north, used the I Ching, found the door. By that point, I was going a little nuts from lack of food or sleep. It is hard to sleep when there isn’t daytime or nighttime. And when you think you’re on a mission from God. No no, not God, I’m just joking. No, seriously. We were genuinely collapsed when you found us. I don’t know how long we were lying there.

And well, that’s how we got here. Your turn.

* * *

Hermann felt Newton had glossed over some things, but it was nothing compared to how he was going to gloss. First of all, because he knew how to be concise. But also, because he had much less to tell.

“Do you know how the gyroscope works?” Hermann asked.

“Not really,” said Newton, “But it can’t be hard to figure out. What do you say we take it up in those trees and test it out?”

Hermann almost smiled. “You aren’t climbing any trees with that arm.”

“Excuse me, I could say the same about your hip!”

“So—Grumman told you that you had to deliver the I Ching to someone?” Hermann said.

“Yes.”

“Do you think he meant me?”

Newt made a face. “Duh.”

“When did you realize it was me?” Hermann asked.

“I certainly didn't think it was you at first,” said Newt. “I thought you were in our way. I decided it was you when... when you told me you were looking for Dust,” he lied.

“'Decided'?” said Hermann.

“I get a say in this, don't I?” Newt said. “If I’m going to have a fated collaborator, I can say it's you. If I want to.”

“I don’t believe fate works that way.”

Newt shrugged. “Don't care. Life story. Go.”

“I’m keeping the one question every five minutes rule,” he said warningly. Newt rolled his eyes. Fern gave a snuffling sigh and rolled over onto his side, eyes still closed.

* * *

I was born in 1963 in Bavaria. I grew up there. I always had an interest in and aptitude for mathematics, but this was never embraced by my parents.

My parents are an... unusual couple. They met in university. My mother was Jewish, but her family was not strict. My father’s family was Catholic, and very strict. Or rather, my father was very strict. He is extremely devout. But they loved one another, so they were married, and my mother renounced her religion. She did it for my father; but her conversion always had a streak of skepticism, and I recognized the wedge it drove between them.

So perhaps it was a misguided wish to bridge that gap, on my part, but... when my father encouraged me to become a priest, I agreed. I became—

* * *

"You _what_?”

“A priest. Are you suddenly hard of hearing?” snapped Hermann.

“Hermann! You can’t just drop this on me like it’s no big deal...”

“Newton—”

“Did you do it? Are you an ex-priest? Oh, my god, are you _still_ _a priest?_ ”

“Newton, please use your _brain_. Would a priest complain about receiving a mission from angels?”

Newt made a considering face. “Maybe a priest who isn’t completely bats, but, I take your point.” He settled back against the wall where he sat. “Go ahead.”

* * *

Thank you. I was willing to become ordained, as long as I could do my studies at the same time. It was not hard to study both the Bible and physics. I earned my degree early and then devoted myself to the church.

I don’t know what to say except that, when I was twenty-one years old, a few months away from being ordained, I had a crisis of faith. I did not believe. I do not know that I ever had. I realized how blindly I had been clinging to what were, at bottom, nothing more than habits. Habits ingrained in me by a disinterested mother, a zealous father, and callous teachers.

Our worlds are different, Newton, but there is cruelty in our church too. I witnessed things... yet no one listened to me when I tried to report what I saw.

If I did not believe in the organization, and I did not believe in its god, there was nothing left. I quit. My father has not spoken to me since. This was fifteen years ago.

What?

...

No, it was just a convergence of realizations. There was no inciting event.

I fled to England. I went back to school. I hid in my books. Theoretical physics was where scientists went to kill God, so that was where I went. Sometimes I’ve thought... sometimes I think I really went to find Him. But no matter. Go I did. I became the director of the Oxford Dark Matter Research Unit. I worked for almost ten years in that laboratory, and in the end, what did I come out with? A smashed computer drive and a mission from angels.

* * *

Hermann shook his head, finished. Newt could tell that he was lying about at least one thing.

“My story is less interesting,” Hermann said. “And most of it, you knew.”

“Not the _most_ important part,” said Newt, still sounding offended that he had not been told sooner. “A half-Jewish priest... You should know, that’s almost as alien to me as you having no dæmon.”

He was still slouched on the packed dirt floor, his back against the wall. Hermann sat hunched on his stool. The night had long fallen and the moon risen high outside, sliding needles of moonlight slowly across their floor. The fire was flickering, needing more wood.

“It’s not usual in my world either,” said Hermann. “That part of my history is not what I would consider the ‘most important part’ of my life. To borrow a phrase, I consider my work the most important thing about myself, and I can never understand when it is not, to other people.”

“Point taken,” said Newt. “Again.” He sighed. “I guess that explains some things. Like your constant rejection of anything remotely unempirical or unphysical.”

“Does it,” said Hermann flatly.

“Reverse piousness,” said Newt matter-of-factly, hoisting himself up on his elbow. “You switched so hard that now you’re fiercely devoted to the other side.”

“Even if that were accurate—did I not accept the existence of Dust, right in front of you, mere hours ago?”

“Yes, but only because you could finally _see_ it, empirically and physically,” said Newt. “Still all highly scientific, yet somehow, I notice, highly subjective? I’d say fierce, blind devotion to principles is just how you operate.”

“It is not blind devotion, it’s rationality,” Hermann said vehemently. “And if we’re going to change this exchange of information to a psychoanalysis...” He stopped.

“What?” said Newt. The fire cracked warningly behind him.

He saw the look on Hermann’s face.

“No, say it.”

But Hermann said nothing.

“No, go on. About Fern, right? If you didn’t get why people in my world consider it deviant before, _now_ you know. Feel better?”

Hermann’s stomach lurched. Newton was right. That had been what he stopped himself from saying.

“And by the way, I know you’re lying about why you left the priesthood,” Newt said, jabbing his finger at him. “Something _did_ happen.”

Hermann shook his head mutely. His mouth still refused to open.

“I don’t know what, but Hermann, I was completely honest with you, and if you—”

“Love,” Hermann said, like the word had been pried out. “I fell in love.”

Newton stared at him.

“With a man.”

A night bird cooed outside.

“I... I was not surprised, by what you told me tonight,” Hermann said hoarsely. “I had figured it out.”

There was a pause.

Newt said, “Are you still together?”

“No,” said Hermann, surprised by the smallness of his own voice.

“I see,” said Newt. He sat back against the wall.

Hermann stared at the fire and Newt stared out the other window. The line of their gazes crossed, but their eyes did not meet.

“It’s late,” Hermann said at last.

“Don’t you think it’s strange...” Newt said, seeming not to hear him. “I come from this oppressive religious world, and they hate everything I stand for... And you come from a secular world, yet you almost chose to become part of that religious order?”

“But I didn’t,” said Hermann. “And now they hate me too.”

Newt almost smiled, but did not. “That’s true.”

He kept staring at the flames. Hermann watched him.

“Will you tell me about him?” Newton said.

“No.”

“Okay.”

They both watched the fire.

* * *

The next day they began planning their climb into the wheel-pod trees. The mulefa were skilled ropemakers, and had many varieties which they let the humans test out. Their complementary disabilities were going to make the climb difficult, but they made the planning even more difficult, because they could not agree who was going up. Each said the other should not go. Every practical decision was prefaced by several minutes of back-and-forth. The mulefa were mystified by this form of collaboration, but since they didn’t understand what was being said, they mostly ignored it.

The unexpected rawness and nearly-real fight by the fire paved a strange runway. When Newt woke the next morning, he expected things to be more distant. But Hermann was on him immediately with petty complaints, in, if anything, a more familiar way. For the next few days, they didn’t address the things that had passed between them by the fire. Newt thought that was because they had got too personal. It felt like there was a sensitive spot, waiting like quicksand to suck them back in. The more they argued about unimportant things, the easier it was to stay in the safe zone.

So they bickered their way towards a climbing system. Newt knew about ropes and harnesses because he had done some rock climbing, he claimed.

“When?” said Hermann unbelievingly.

“Oh, here and there,” said Newt vaguely. “Lots of mountains in the North.”

“I don’t believe archaeological expeditions do a lot of rock climbing.”

“Maybe not in your world...”

“Oh, please.”

Whether Newton’s experience was invented, he did know a lot about knots. He wove a climbing harness and a harness for the anchor person who would stay on the ground. They would need to sling two ropes over the lowest branch, one for the safety harness, and one for climbing. To make the second rope climbable, they tied a series of loops in the rope, for hand and footholds. When they were done, it was almost a hundred fifty feet.

For that was twice the height of the lowest branch, and the rope had to be twice as long in order to hang back down and be secured. They debated about the best way to get the rope over the branch. Since Hermann would not approve Newt’s experimental spike boots (“Why do you hate innovation?”), they settled on a bow and arrow.

There were other preparations to make first. Newt took ground-level measurements on the gyroscope to compare to canopy-level measurements. They also needed a more portable way to carry the panes. A zalif offered a bamboo-like tube to install the panes the right distance apart.

“You’re going to make two, right?” Newt said.

“Two what?”

“Two telescopes.”

“That would be silly,” said Hermann.

“ _How_ would that—”

“I am making binoculars,” Hermann said.

Newt thought about that.

“But two is better than one.”

“...I am making two.”

“No, binoculars is not two, it’s one!”

“It has two lenses, Newton,” said Hermann in his don’t-be-an-idiot voice.

“Alright, alright,” said Newt. “We can share. I guess.”

“You say that as if you're coming.”

“Ha, ha.”

Hermann went back to scoring small circles in the glass panes. Fern gnawed restlessly on a stick.

“If you insist on making binoculars, why aren’t you just putting the lenses in your old binoculars?” Newt said after a moment.

Hermann looked up.

“What? I mean, you already took them apart.”

Hermann glared at him.

“You didn’t think of that, did you,” said Newt.

“Of course I did,” said Hermann. “The bamboo is... wider.”

Newt grinned. “Weak.”

Hermann picked up his things and stood huffily. “Working near you is impossible,” he said.

“Suit yourself,” said Newt, still smiling as Hermann stalked off.

He and Fern exchanged a look.

“Do you think things are different now?”

“Since your argument?”

“Would you call it that?”

“Hard to tell,” said Fern.

“He certainly seems crankier,” said Newt.

“I don’t see that as a bad sign,” said Fern. “It isn’t real anger. He’s saying what he thinks... So even if that’s usually, ‘Shut up Newton,’ he’s direct about it. If anything, more direct than before.”

Newt frowned. “Weird.” He fiddled with the gyroscope. “I don’t think I get that. He would be easier to understand with a dæmon. And he would be easier to deal with, too. Humans shouldn’t be without them.”

Fern made a non-committal sound and went back to gnawing on his stick.

“No, really,” said Newt, looking at him. “It’s lonely. It’s lonely being a person. Can you imagine me, without you? I would have thrown myself off the Jordan bell tower by 17.”

“I think you do get it,” Fern said, ignoring Newt’s last comment. “You certainly do your best to get a rise out of him. This is just how the two of you communicate.”

“But is it better than, like, sincerity?”

“How much did you enjoy sincerity, the other night?”

Newt made a face. “Not much, man.”

“Well, then.”

The bow and arrows took a whole day to make. In the morning, Hermann whittled the bow while Newt puttered around. For a while he fussed with his plant clippings, which he was now cultivating in little clay pots in their yard; but covertly, he was watching Hermann work.

His research partner sat on his stool in the grass, legs apart, stick wedged under his left armpit while the right hand drew his knife repeatedly down in swift, impressively uniform cuts. His hands moved with purposeful, enviable grace. He was bent so sharply Newt could not see his face, but he could hear his labored breathing.

He paused to scratch his neck, then resumed.

Newt chewed a piece of grass.

Hermann sat up and lifted the stick with both hands, testing its give. It bent appropriately. He turned the stick the other way and worked on the other end. Fern rolled over and squirmed restlessly on the dewy grass.

Hermann finished evening out the width and began carving notches for the string. His eyes moved sharply, following the tip of the knife like a cat tracking a bird.

“Newton,” he said without looking up.

“Hm?”

“Do you have the sinew?”

“Uh-huh.”

Hermann looked up.

“Can you get it, please,” he said.

“Oh,” said Newt. “Yeah. Sure.”

He went into the hut and brought it back out. It was grazer sinew, treated and turned into a tight catgut-like material the mulefa used to bind wood. It had very little give, which was just what they needed.

When Newt returned, Hermann had finished the notches.

“I’ll bend it, you tie the string,” Hermann said as Newt sat down facing him on the grass. “I trust you know what knot would be appropriate.”

“Yeah,” said Newt. “Then we’ll glue the knot.”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” he said.

Hermann laid the bow on the grass between them. Newt laid the string parallel. Hermann took the bow by each end, and pulled, bending it as far as he could. Newt watched his bony knuckles turning white with the effort. He heard a small strained exhale.

“Newton.”

“Oh, sorry,” he said. “On it.”

He hurriedly tied a temporary loop in one end of the stiff string, holding it close to his chest so he could use his immobilized hand. Then he looped it quickly around one notch. He took the other end of the string and, shifting his position, moved to the other notch.

“Move your hand,” he said. Hermann obliged with a tiny puff of a sigh.

Newt looped the sinew around this notch and pulled, taking the tension off Hermann and onto the string. Without being asked, Hermann moved his fingers over the string, holding it in place.

He took his other hand off the bow and picked up the loose end of the string for Newt. Newt took the slack with his good hand and pulled it round the taut string, then made a tricky twisted loop which Hermann dropped the end into. Newt pulled it tight, then nodded to Hermann who took the string end again. He repeated the loop and drop. In a moment, the knots on one side were tied. They switched to the other side, where Newt undid the temporary loop and Hermann held the string to the notch with one strong hand. They repeated the co-knotting. When Newt said “okay,” Hermann let go with a quick exhale.

The bow sprang out only a tiny bit. It stayed taut.

“Sweet,” said Newt, a little breathless. He grinned at his research partner. Hermann, tension released, even smiled back.

* * *

Hermann whittled the arrows in the afternoon with some guidance from Newt. Hermann had not really ever seen a bow and arrow in serious use, because, why would he? But in Newt’s world, especially the North, they were still a fairly common weapon. They had got some feathers from the mulefa, who, strangely enough, saved the feathers dropped by the tualapi. These were large and sturdy, and Newt thought they would make some excellent arrows. When Newt approved the balance of a prototype, Hermann made two more. By that time the sun was setting. They discussed with the mulefa and decided to begin the tree expedition tomorrow morning. They walked back home, having the same argument again about who would climb.

“You don’t _need_ two arms to climb,” Newt was saying, “They’re just helpful. Two legs, you need.”

“Two legs, I _have,_ ” said Hermann. “I’ll just climb slowly. Why do you think I use a cane, Newton? To take pressure off the hip. If I am climbing, pulling myself up by my arms— _both_ of which are _functioning_ —I will be mediating pressure in the same manner.”

“You’re lying to yourself if you don’t think that’s going to hurt like a bitch the next morning,” Newt said.

“I think I know my own limits, thank you,” said Hermann. “Unlike you, apparently.”

“Unlike me?” said Newt. “My arm is—”

“Newton,” said Hermann, looking at him as they walked. “You cannot be serious.”

“What?” he said. “I’m totally serious, man.”

“No,” said Hermann. “Which one of us is suited to climb: the one with a hip problem, or the one whose _soul_ is physically embodied in the form of a non-climbing animal?”

Newt opened his mouth to make a heated reply, then shut it. He looked at his dæmon with a frown. Fern was trotting impassively beside him

“I can make him a harness.”

“Before tomorrow?”

“Man, when were you going to tell me?” Newt demanded his dæmon.

Fern sneezed. “Never?” he said. “I don’t want to climb.”

“What!”

“That shit is high, Newt,” he said, “And Hermann is right. I am not a climbing animal.”

“There isn’t time to make a harness now, anyway,” said Hermann, trying unsuccessfully to hide his satisfaction. They were almost at the hut.

“Wow, I can’t believe this!” Newt said. “You waited until the last possible moment to bring this up, just so I wouldn’t have enough time to fix it.”

“Maybe so,” said Hermann, pausing outside their door. “But you are also responsible for the oversight, Newton—I mean, you’ve lived together your entire life and you _claim_ to have gone climbing before, it’s hardly my fault if you...”

Newt’s hand shot out, taking the handle before Hermann could. He held the door shut.

“That’s cold, man,” he said. “You know I wanted to go.”

Hermann looked up at him.

“Once I take the first trip, I will be able to set up a more permanent and stable system. The mulefa have pulleys. I can install them.”

He frowned at Newt, who was looking strangely tense in the dimming dusk.

“So that all three of us will be able to climb,” he added, somewhat loudly.

Newt studied his research partner through narrowed eyes, still holding the door shut. Shrewd. Was this revenge? Probably not. Could he make Fern a harness before tomorrow? Probably yes, if he stayed up late. The last bit of sunset was giving the physicist the slightest rosy glow, and Newt thought about whipping around to catch the sun before it sank below the horizon. They lived in sight of the ocean, but he had yet to see the green flash. He had only caught it once on his earth. Maybe this atmosphere did not have the right qualities for it. He didn't remember what qualities those were. He should ask Hermann. Hermann would know.

Hermann was staring at him with a frown. “Newton.”

Newt nodded. He was thinking about the sun, but in his time thinking about looking at it, it had finished sinking—the glow was gone from Hermann’s face.

Anyway, it hurt your eyes to look right at it.

That didn’t usually stop him.

“Sorry,” said Newt, letting go of the door. “Got distracted.”

“Evidently.” Hermann made no move to open it.

“Pulleys will be more stable,” said Newt, skipping the ‘you’re right’ part of the sentence that they both knew was there. “You can go up alone tomorrow but... know that I’m not happy about it.”

“Thank you for the permission,” Hermann said dryly.

“Just... be careful.”

Hermann sighed and opened their door.

That night, Hermann dreamed that he had a correspondent he had never met. They exchanged letters thick with something—scientific intrigue? Something more? In the dream he could not tell—while all around them the ice age returned, covering every continent with glaciers and choking every ocean with ice floes. They finally met under the last surviving deciduous tree on earth. It was Newton, of course.

* * *

The expedition set out early for the wheel-pod grove. Hermann rose with the same shapeless anxiety he got on the way to the airport before a long journey. The expedition party was the two of them, Atal, and two more mulefa. Both humans were still nervous riders, though they would never admit it to each other. But the air that washed over them was so clear and fresh that, for the duration of the ride, it seemed nothing could go wrong in this world.

They had only made three arrows, owing to time. Hermann was deferring worrying about the climb by instead worrying about the shooting. He was the only one who could operate the bow. But he was not a good shot.

Under mulefa advisement they picked a tree, in the middle of the grove and in sight of the sea. They tied the first arrow to the light line; this string would be tied to the main ropes once the arrow made it over the branch, and used to haul the ropes over.

Hermann did not have to hit any target, he simply had to shoot higher than the branch. He told himself this as he took aim, angled up, estimated the distance, and with a careful exhale, let go.

Hermann seriously underestimated the arc. It didn’t even make it halfway up.

He dragged it back and tried again. Better, but still not very close.

The third time, it pierced the trunk of the tree. He cursed quietly, trying to keep his head. He felt the eyes of the mulefa on him, the mulefa whose very lives counted on this operation. When he yanked the string, the arrow fell back, but the tip stayed in the bark.

Newt, who had been uncharacteristically quiet, said, “Don’t worry. We can fix that one if we need to.”

Hermann said nothing. He tied the light line to the next arrow and tried again.

His fourth shot fell short again, but his fifth went over. Newt whooped. “Nice shot, Hermann!”

Hermann sighed with relief and began shaking the string to shimmy it down the other side. It did not move.

“I think it’s caught on the branch,” he said. He tugged, and felt a fateful snap. The string and the tied half of the arrow fell to the ground, broken.

He looked at Newt, stricken.

“We only have one left...”

Newton looked like he was doing some fast thinking.

“I could do it,” said Newt. He could see Hermann was too agitated for an ‘if you hadn’t broken my arm’ crack so he didn’t make one. He had an idea. “If...”

He chewed his lip, then held out his hand. Hermann put the bow in it.

“You’re going to have to be my other arm,” said Newt.

“Very well.”

Newt took the bow. He held it in his right hand and pointed it up, assessing the target. Then he nodded to Hermann, and Hermann took the last arrow and nocked it for him, resting it on Newt’s forefinger on the bow. Hermann positioned himself perpendicular to Newt, his right elbow brushing Newt’s bound arm. He mirrored Newt's stance like they were partners in a strange waltz. Hermann took the feathered end of the arrow between his fingers. Newt lifted his bow arm and made some adjustments, leveling it to their target.

“Aim’s not about measuring,” he said, voice low because Hermann was so close. “It’s about instinct.”

“Not my strong suit,” said Hermann to Newt’s temple.

“I know, man.” Newt had found an angle he felt good about. “All right. Go ahead.”

Hermann inhaled and pulled the string taut. His forearm filled Newt’s peripheral vision, shaking slightly.

“Hey. Relax. No shaking.”

Newt put his temple against Hermann’s elbow to brace it, and without much thought, rested his impaired hand on Hermann’s ribs.

“It’s going to be fine,” he said. “We’ll get it.”

Hermann’s eyes stayed fixed on the target, but he nodded. He steadied slightly.

“Here we go,” said Newt, following Hermann’s eyes to their shared destination. “On my mark.”

He lifted his arm a tiny bit more and said, “Back, and—shoot.”

Hermann shot. The arrow sailed high above the branch and arced down towards the ground, string trailing behind like a falling kite.

Hermann exhaled with relief and they let the bow down in a shared motion. Newt whooped.

“Nice shot, man!”

Setting up the ropes took another hour because Newt and the mulefa fussed so much over Hermann’s safety. The ladder rope was anchored to the closest tree, and the harness rope was anchored to Newt, who would continually take up the slack so that if Hermann slipped, he would not drop far. At the last minute he decided he was too light and anchored himself, the anchor, to Atal. She was also concerned, and agreed readily. Fernweh circled round throughout, sniffing everything repeatedly and growling at any animals who came too close.

Finally, they were ready for Hermann to climb.

“Got everything?” said Newt, watching him close his little pack.

“Yes,” said Hermann. He had the gyroscope, the amber binoculars, the notebook and pencil.

“Hey, what’s that?”

Newt’s hand shot out and stopped him from closing the bag. He pulled out the binoculars.

“Oh, I see,” said Newt with unforgivable glee. “Innovative strategy, Dr. Gottlieb...”

Hermann glared. He had, as Newton suggested, installed the amber lenses in his old binoculars.

“Shut up,” said Hermann, snatching them back. Newt smirked and let him take them. He shouldered the bag and got ready to climb.

* * *

Few people in the world of the city by the sea seemed to remember the man with the cane and the pack. Many days passed between each thread. But Father Gomez was patient, and found them each—the children who remembered him, the man unafraid of the specters. The elderly couple who remembered him, the man who was mysteriously protected. So were Father Gomez and his beetle dæmon. Why, they asked?

Now a week had passed since his last witness. No one more seemed to know a thing. No one after the elderly couple had seen him. But Father Gomez was a man of faith; he prayed each morning and night for a sign, for the strength to find it, gripping his crucifix and his rifle tight all the while. On the eighth day, as he searched up a dusty ridge, he saw something strange. A puddle.

For it had just rained in the world on the other side of a window, and the rain had fallen through to this one. Father Gomez slipped his hand through the window, and touched the grass. It was real. Still damp. This was where Gottlieb had gone. He was sure of it.


	6. On the Platform

Hermann did not operate best under the eyes of an anxious audience, and certainly not in physical feats. But after ten slow minutes, he remembered that none of the mulefa could climb. So his slowness was unknown to them _—_ it was no slowness at all. He was going at the average speed of a climber in this world, for he was the first one.

With that in mind, he ascended the rope steadily. It took more than half an hour, but he at last reached the thick branch and pulled himself up.

Catching his breath, Hermann looked around in awe. Around him a lateral forest of limbs wove up and curved towards the sky. At the end of the branches, the huge, hand-sized leaves shushed and swayed like prairie grass. Rivers of blue sky shifted between the moving shell of leaves. It felt like he was inside the metal spokes of a vast umbrella.

It was incredible. It was beautiful and hushed except for the wind, which sounded like the sea. Hermann thought of his childhood dreams of being an astronaut. Was this so different?

The tree was so enormous that he would have had to climb another twenty feet to see out of the canopy, and he did not think he was up to that. He would make his measurements from this limb.

Hermann chanced a look over the edge. He could see Newton and the mulefa some eighty feet below, like he were leaning out an eighth-story window, but they were tiny and inaudible. His rope was getting shaken in a way that seemed like a communiqué from Newton (urgent and incomprehensible). Hermann took out the notebook. He wrote a tiny note, found the broken bit of arrow still stuck among the twigs, and tied the note to it. Then he dropped it.

Something small and white was flipping down from the tree. Newt dropped the slack and hurried over to get it. It was a note from Hermann:

 _Made it.  
_ _—HG_

Newt laughed at his research partner’s formality, but felt reassured.

Hermann stayed up until the late afternoon. He set up the gyroscope like Newton had showed him, and let it calibrate. While it did, he crawled carefully out on the branch to get a better view of the leaves. He could see little white flowers hidden among the branches, absurdly tiny in the vast tree. He made notes on the flowers for Newton. Though he did not know what they meant, he also took note of the gyroscope’s movements, for Newton. Then he took out the binoculars and watched the Dust.

He had spent a lot of time looking through the amber glass since their breakthrough a week before. It was soothing, almost hypnotic to watch. The particles behaved so strangely. Part of him still could not believe what he was seeing, but in a strange way, he still liked seeing it.

Hermann watched the dust filter through the leaves, falling aimlessly to the earth. He looked up at the sky and watched it drift towards the sea. It seemed to move faster up higher, but it was hard to tell. He had simply installed the double lenses in the empty tubes of his binoculars—the magnification of real binoculars was impossible without mirrors and special lenses. Perhaps he would have to find a way to magnify, to better assess the Dust’s behavior.

After an hour of watching the Dust in the late afternoon sky, he felt certain that the upper current was flowing towards the sea. That draft was at the canopy level, too high to see from the ground. This could not have anything to do with real wind or climate factors, because Dust did as it pleased. Or so they thought. More observation was necessary.

As the sun sank, Hermann wrote another note and tied it to his pencil, then dropped it.

 _Ready to come down.  
_ _—HG_

It was determined the best solution for long-term study was to build a platform in the tree. With characteristic industry the mulefa set about it. When the platform was done a few days later, Hermann climbed back up and installed pulleys, and they raised it up with Newton and Fern sitting on it. The two humans spent a day installing the platform in a web of thick ropes. When it was secured, they sat on a raft in the darkening canopy. Fern, who had been anxiously watching his human scramble around high branches with one arm all day (as had Hermann), lay on his side on the slats. Hermann and Newt sat on the edge, watching the sun go down outside the leaves. They were silent. Tomorrow, their study would begin in earnest. Tonight, they watched the future come without moving to meet it.

* * *

So began their research. Each morning, Newt took gyroscope readings from the ground, then they went up to the platform and he took readings there throughout the day. In the evening, he took measurements on the ground again. They were different on the ground and in the canopy, but they did not yet understand, or interrogate, the significance of this. They simply catalogued it.

Hermann meanwhile continued to tinker with the binoculars. He wanted to wrangle some keplerian optics out of their amber lenses, but he needed mirrors. First he tried the lenses and magnifying mirrors from his original binoculars, but they interfered with the amber and prevented him from seeing the Dust. Newton, watching him fiddle with the mirrors on the third morning of their canopy study, suggested an amber mirror.

“That would require a silver backing,” said Hermann, glancing up. “Neither we nor the mulefa have any silver.”

Newt pensively chewed a small twig.

“What if you—”

“Newton, I am trying to concentrate—”

“No, no, listen. You _have_ a silver backing. Take the glass off the tiny mirrors from your original binocs. Put some of the leftover lacquer glass over the silver back. Voila. Amber mirror.”

To Newt’s loudly proclaimed delight and Hermann’s secret but equal delight, this worked. They now had binoculars that magnified as well as showing Dust.

With this advancement, it became certain that the upper current of Dust was moving significantly faster and thicker than the rest. This view of the current gave Hermann a powerful unease. They had no empirical proof this was not normal, but in his gut he disliked seeing it. If he had to make an unscientific guess of it, he would have said this was the problem. But he was not satisfied with unscientific guesses, and neither was Newt.

* * *

Newt had an inkling of an idea. Not really enough to go on. But it struck him while he was lying on his back on the raft, on day six, head turned, gazing past his quietly writing research partner at the sashaying leaves and the tiny, tiny flowers.

So tiny.

Why?

He turned his head slowly, panning around the inside of the canopy. Newt had looked several times, and his eyesight was not to be depended upon, but he was pretty sure their tree had no growing seedpods. Absolutely none. This seemed impossible, or very dire. Newt really wanted to examine a seedpod in development. He did some quick math about the number of seedpods harvested and the number of trees in the grove. Maybe it was not dire; maybe they only grew one at a time, like those tiny, cultivated trees that still grow one regular size fruit. What were those called?

“Hermann,” he said.

“Yes?”

“What are those tiny trees called?” he said. “The ones people mutilate so they stay small.”

“Bonsai trees.”

“Hmm.” That didn’t sound right to Newt.

“They don’t mutilate them,” Hermann added, looking up. “Have you ever seen one?”

“Don’t think so.”

“They are carefully trimmed and twisted into their ideal form,” said Hermann. “It is a discipline of great care.”

 _Sounds like something the child of a religious zealot would say,_ Newt almost said. Fern, hearing that thought, sat up and looked at him sharply. _Well, I didn’t say it,_ he thought to his dæmon.

“Have you seen any seedpods in our tree?” Newt asked.

“No,” said Hermann. He took off his glasses. They hung from a cord around his neck, which Newt found very funny and took every opportunity to tease him about. “I noticed their absence as well.”

Newt turned a little to scan a nearby area of the canopy. “Do you think the trees only produce one at a time?”

Hermann, now following the train of thought that had led to the bonsai question, shook his head. “I considered it. But I’ve seen several fall at once from one grove. This tree should have some.”

“Ah... and it _does_ ,” said Newt. He sat up. He pointed. “Gotcha.”

Hermann squinted in that direction, then picked up the binoculars and looked. “Oh yes. Reassuring.”

“Sort of,” said Newt. “I’m going to take a look.” He stood up, and before Hermann could stop him, snatched the binoculars from his hand.

“You’re what?”

Newt stepped to the edge of the platform. The seedpod was a few yards away—at the edge of comfortable Fern-separation territory, but still within it. Fern growled. He did not like this idea.

“Absolutely not,” said Hermann sharply. “It’s much too dangerous.”

“Too late,” said Newt, and with his good hand he reached for the closest vertical branch and stepped off.

“Newton!”

He heard Hermann scramble to his feet, and quickened his pace. He reached for the next limb, a little further, and took a little leap to reach the next foothold. The jump was small but he knew Hermann couldn't make it.

“Newton! Get back here!”

Fern barked.

“Newton!”

Newt kept going without turning. The seedpod was above a sloping branch only a few more yards away. He balanced carefully on the slanting limb, keeping his body low. He was almost there now. He could see the seedpod was still green, as much like a young coconut as it would soon be like an old one. Big coconut danishes. The fate of this planet rests on your shoulders, danishified coconuts, he thought. Try to hold on a little longer. Behind him, Fern was still barking. Newt was starting to feel the pull of separation, but he was pretty close now. Hermann had stopped calling his name; that did not bode well.

Finally, he came within touching distance of the seedpod. Fern’s barks had a whining edge to them now, because both of them were in pain. For the sixtieth time since they had started climbing into the canopy, and the tenth time that day, Newt saw a violent image of one of them dropping and leaving the other in the canopy, both of them dying before the traitor hit the ground. This taste of that pain was an unwelcome warning.

He squinted through his glasses, trying to focus over the ache. The little white flower was pointed at the sun, and almost wilted, while below it hung the green, danish-sized seedpod. Newt reached out and felt the seedpod, very lightly so as not to disturb it. He touched the center. No oil yet. Yet?

Fumbling, he pulled the binoculars around their strap. He peered in, adjusting the magnification to zero, and looked at the flower. A paltry dusting of Dust wafted down into the cupped-upward petals.

No oil. Not much Dust. Connection?

Newt pondered for a second, then leaned on his elbow and pointed the binoculars at the next closest flower, a yard away in the leaves. This one grew upwards too. He zoomed in closer. A tiny bit of Dust was falling into that one too. But way up here, most of it was flowing laterally.

He realized he had been thinking about the Dust like pollen, drifting through the air from flower to flower. But, he thought, why not? Maybe that was why the seedpod oil had special properties. Because the trees were “pollinated” by Dust.

Now something clicked into place. Newt hurriedly pointed his binoculars to the sky, even though he knew what he would see there. Yes. He scanned the rest of the canopy in his eyeline. He looked until he was sure he had it.

The canopy was full of flowers, waiting to be “pollinated” by Dust falling from the sky. But it was not falling now: most of it was flowing away, horizontally. It washed by the flowers without falling in. That was why the trees were dying.

Newt shimmied backwards. It took a lot of focus to keep his balance when all his internal alarms were telling him to yell, _I have it!_ Climbing was important. More important than what he had discovered. He needed to focus on climbing so as to relay said discovery.

Newton reached the horizontal branch and let himself down. Hermann watched, twisting his hands together anxiously. Yelling was not going to help, even though it was all he wanted to do. He did not want to startle Newton. When the man’s feet were on the solid platform, then he would yell. Oh, would he yell. Fern was spinning anxious circles on the platform next to him, whining quietly.

When Newton was a branch away, he finally looked up at them. “Guys,” he said breathlessly. “I got it! The Dust—”

Hermann took in a big breath to begin shouting, but as Newton took the last leap, distracting himself with his own speech, his foot slipped.

“Oh—”

“ _Newton!_ ”

Newt gasped as his chest smacked the edge of the platform, only one elbow on top, his center of gravity very much not in the safe zone, and Fern was barking like crazy and clamping his jaws around Newt’s forearm, and his legs were kicking at the ropes but not gaining purchase, and two strong hands were reaching under his armpits and heaving him up, scraping his whole torso along the rough edge of the boards.

He kicked until his legs were safely on the platform and then collapsed onto his stomach. Both men were panting like they had nearly drowned. Fern was whimpering and licking the top of his head frantically. Newt could feel his arm bleeding from Fern’s bite. The adrenaline coursing through him downgraded that to a minor concern. He realized he was lying on Hermann’s leg but he could not move. It was the kind of adrenaline that just paralyzed you, it seemed like. That was fine.

Hermann sat back on his hands, chest heaving. He tipped his head back and squeezed his eyes shut.

God. God, god, god.

Newton was lying on his leg. Hermann could feel his heartbeat thumping against his calf. He let that ground him. When it felt safe to open his eyes, he did so. Fern was licking Newton all over the head and face, snuffling anxiously, for all the world like a regular dog.

Hermann jogged his leg. Slowly, Newt rolled over onto his back. He looked up at Hermann from the platform.

“You...”

“Thank you,” Newt said hoarsely. “Before you start cussing me out and telling me what a goddamn idiot—”

“You _—_ ”

“—I just wanted to say it, but now, go ahead—”

“— _bloody idiot_ —you are the _most_ irresponsible, asinine, birdbrained, thoughtless, disastrous, most _idiotic_ —”

“Oops, you said that one twice,” Newt interjected, raising a shaky finger. “Doesn’t count—”

“—person I have _ever_ worked with, no, _person I have ever met in my life,_ it is an _absolute_ mystery to me how you have survived this long—”

“Just living by my wits, baby,” Newt said to the canopy, letting his head roll back onto the wood.

“Your _nonexistent_ wits,” Hermann snarled.

Newt rolled his head to the side to look up at him.

“You done?”

Hermann looked at him with wild eyes. “No, I am not!”

“Okay,” said Newt, closing his eyes. “Continue.”

But Hermann did not. He looked down at the scientist, flat on his back. His good arm was bleeding, his legs were shaking visibly, and where his shirt was torn, Hermann could see serious scrapes.

“I figured out what's wrong with the trees, by the way,” said Newt hoarsely, eyes still closed. “Dust isn't falling down into the flowers.”

Hermann made no reply. Instead he reached out and put his hand on Newton’s chest. Newt sighed. He could feel Hermann’s hand still shaking.

After a moment Hermann removed his hand, but Newt only had a second to feel its absence before two hands appeared on his good arm. They gripped him tightly.

“You gonna break this one too?” Newt murmured without opening his eyes. “Go on. You know I deserve it.”

He heard a hesitant sigh.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. But he did no more to encourage Hermann to let go, and he did not for a long time.

* * *

It took a couple days for Hermann to let the two of them back on the platform, and when he did, he was still cagey. For Newt’s part, he was glad to rest on the ground for a few days. He was terribly sore. He did fishing duty with Atal while Fern lay in the sun. Later he sketched his plants, which were all growing nicely. In the evenings he made Hermann dinner when he came back, and they bickered over their data while Hermann fussed over his injuries.

When they went back up, all three, Hermann was surprised at Newt and Fern’s ease. “Aren’t you... worried?” Hermann said. Newt was letting him fix the new bandage on his right arm, the one over his bite.

“Just sore,” said Newt. “Are you?”

The look on Hermann’s face answered that question. Newt shrugged.

“Don’t be,” he said. “Can’t get worried every time someone drowns, or we’d never ride a boat again. Sometimes the dangerous things are worth doing.”

Hermann muttered something about _an insane person is someone who tries the same thing over and over expecting a different result,_ but Newt pretended he hadn’t heard. Privately, Hermann was again impressed by Newton’s fearlessness. He acted like it made him more anxious for his safety, but in truth, it reassured him. He felt he had no such bravery himself; but strangely, because Newton had it, it was as if he didn't need it.

The second week in the canopy, they started spending nights. Newt wanted to get nighttime readings on the gyroscope. Hermann wouldn’t hear of him staying alone, even though, of course, Newt was never alone. But he welcomed Hermann’s company even though he pretended it was an inconvenience, and so they brought up mats and food and camped out.

The longer they spent on their little raft, the more the fear of falling faded. It was replaced by a peaceful awe. At night, with the gently shifting branches below, the bright alien stars overhead, and the whispering leaves all round, it was like a childish dream. They talked the same questions over endlessly, theories about the trees, Dust, consciousness, the mulefa, humankind. Their conversations led nowhere, cycling into the echoless night, night after night. But in the years after, when either of them recalled their time in the world of the mulefa, it was those nights they thought of.

It was the fourth night, an hour or two after the moon had begun to rise. They had exhausted serious topics and now Hermann was explaining how “television” worked. Newt was lying back on his elbow watching him. He was talking sitting up straight, his legs dangling over the edge, and his face full of moonlight. Television sounded neat. Probably. Newt was not really listening to the words his research partner was saying, he realized. He was just staring at him in the moonlight. It was nearly bright as day. Or maybe Hermann just looked glowy. He was gesturing as he spoke, shaping a box and now a vee shape above the box and now he was clicking imaginary buttons with his long fingers. He looked beautiful, Newt thought, in the moonlight. Anyone would, he thought. Under this moon, anyone would be beautiful enough to fall in love with.

But it was Hermann; so fate had dictated.

* * *

As the second week wound to an end, Newton began getting restless. They had spent six nights on the platform, going down into town during the day to help with chores and restock on food. He said they were making no progress. Hermann found his frustration curious. He was usually so optimistic, he thought. Then he thought, perhaps he isn’t. Perhaps he is an impatient researcher. How would I know? Hermann frequently had to remind himself that he had worked with Newton for weeks, not years. Frequently, he reminded the naturalist that it felt like decades.

Hermann gazed at him, imagining being his research partner under normal circumstances. Of course they never would have been, because biology and physics were so distant. But like lonely people everywhere, Hermann had an imagination rich with lives he would never live. Newton was chewing a blade of grass as he drew some rough graphs out front of their house. Hermann pictured him chewing a ballpoint pen cap across the desk from him in an underfunded lab. He pictured making Newton endless cups of dreadful instant coffee; he heard Newton asking him late at night if he wanted anything from the vending machine. In this unlikely reality, they ate fresh fruit and fish with aliens, and Newton had no idea what a vending machine was.

Hermann spent an unpleasant moment considering the future. Because he did expect to go back, eventually. Hope often snuck up on him, asking if he could perhaps... _take_ Newton back into his world with him. Fernweh would be hard to explain, but not impossible. It was just that Newton seemed to recall his own world so miserably. In Hermann’s mind this was almost a rescue. Newton’s world did not have religious freedom or sexual acceptance, it did not have _Jurassic Park_. To varying extents, Hermann’s world did.

He tried to imagine suggesting this to Newton. He didn’t think Newton would take it badly, he just didn’t know how to bring it up. ‘ _Though it may not appear so from the outside, we work so well together... it would be a shame to lose our rapport now.’ ‘Are you asking me to move into your universe, Dr. Gottlieb?’_

But Hermann did not like thinking about the future. And usually he could avoid it, because despite everything, all the mystery and danger, he felt satisfied with the present.

Newton spat the grass out and crumpled his paper.

“This is useless,” he said. “These graphs tell us nothing.”

“You are the one drawing them,” said Hermann.

Newt sighed huffily.

“Perhaps we need a new approach,” said Hermann.

Newt looked up at him. “You mean the I Ching?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You wanted me to say it, though,” Newt said, scrambling to his feet.

“I absolutely did not,” Hermann called after him as he ran into the hut to fetch it.

They sat in the grass and repeated the ritual that had unbound Newton so many weeks ago. Hermann was quicker this time, accessing the trance more easily.

_You voluntarily offered to take a task, but things proceeded unexpectedly and you began to feel upset. Fortunately, no disaster occurred._

_Sit on a big tree in a ravine and keep secluded for three years._

Newton made a thoughtful sound.

“Sounds like it’s telling me to relax,” he said.

“Perhaps.”

“Three years,” Newton said. “Do you think it means that literally?”

“Probably not,” said Hermann.

“I mean... I would happily stay here for three years,” Newton said. He gestured around, as if to say, _who wouldn’t?_   “But I feel like there are things happening back home that we would miss out on.”

“Things?”

Newton chewed his grass. “Sky split open, remember? End times? I’d like some assurance that’s getting fixed.”

Hermann nodded. “Ah.”

“But if the angels tell us we have to stay for three years, well...”

“I doubt that it’s literal,” said Hermann stiffly. “If the quantity was important, there would be more than one matching response, with different quantities.”

“Hmm,” said Newt. He looked at Hermann. “You seem awfully calm about all this.”

“About reading the I Ching?”

“Yeah,” said Newt. “You used to hate talking to angels.”

“Well, there isn't any proof angels are speaking to us through these st—”

“Oh, give it a rest, Hermann,” said Newt. “You know what I mean. _I_ feel better knowing our mission is still approved by the forces—angelic or non-angelic—who sent us out on it. But do you?”

Hermann considered the yarrow stalks quietly.

“I do not feel differently,” he said.

“Than before?”

“Than before the reading.”

“You don’t feel reassured?”

“I didn’t need to be reassured,” said Hermann.

Newt looked quickly at him. “Why not?”

Hermann’s chest felt strangely tight. “Because I feel that I’m in the right place. For the first time, I am not wondering.”

Fern, sitting next to Newt, nudged his hand with his nose. Newt petted his dæmon slowly on the head.

“You mean, for the first time since you left Oxford?” Newt asked quietly. “Or like, in your life?”

Hermann was having difficulty holding Newton’s gaze. “I couldn’t say,” he said, equally quiet. He didn’t say that how strange it would have been, a few months ago, to trust his life to a feeling. Now, it did not feel strange at all.

That night, Hermann dreamt of Lyra and her friend Will. They were coming.

* * *

The assassin Father Gomez walked east until he reached the sea. He met no one. He saw bizarre deer-like creatures, diamond-shaped and unnatural. God had had no hand in this world, he felt. Yet he knew this was not possible. For God had created all. His job was merely to execute one more piece of His will. God had created him, and his task. And these deer as well, in His infinite and mysterious wisdom.

On the sea, he saw sailboats. He hailed them, wishing to speak to the people of this world, but as they approached he realized they were great birds. Their elegant speed had a malevolence to it. But Father Gomez was not afraid. His beetle dæmon buzzed in the air beside him. God, and his rifle, would protect them.

The first to land sprang onto shore and, waddling slower than it had swum but still quite fast, lumbered towards him. Father Gomez saw the evil flint of its eye. He calmly cocked his rifle and fired, shooting the thing dead from fifty yards. It dropped. Its companions halted at the edge of the water. 

These animals now knew fear. And well, if he could teach them to fear him, he could teach them to obey him.

* * *

Newt’s calm did not last long. He became restless again, in a different way, and his agitation infected Hermann now. Though they continued their study, the expectation of Lyra’s arrival hung over them, making it feel like they were in a waiting period before a sea change.

They alternated survey days and mulefa days. There was not much change in the canopy data. On the ground, they did fishing and net weaving. They got into a rhythm of weaving together, and spent afternoons arguing about nothing as they worked.

Newton took up other small projects. He would take notes on flora and fauna and bounce evolutionary theories off Hermann, which Hermann would obligingly poke holes in. Or Newton would disappear for an afternoon, to examine some younger seed-pod trees. He spent each evening filling pages in the back of the notebook.

“What are you writing?” Hermann asked one night.

“None of your business,” said Newt. He looked up. “For now. No peeking.”

Hermann resisted looking, with difficulty. He felt something changing already. It was as if his admission of existential calm had brought about its end.

One afternoon, Newt said he and Fern were going to spend the night on the platform. Hermann offered to join, but Newton said he didn’t have to. Hermann ate with Atal. He watered Newton’s plant collection, which seemed to multiply of its own accord, and then he went to bed and lay awake, hearing the silence.

He tried to understand Newton’s withdrawal. Newt did not speak to Hermann differently, but he spoke to him less. Hermann guessed at why: he could feel the end approaching. So could Hermann. But that did not make Hermann want to withdraw, it made him want to...

It was so quiet in the hut alone. He stared at the plants on the windowsill, shivering in the moonlight. He had gotten used to falling asleep with the sound of Newton’s breathing close by. And Fern’s, he supposed, though it was softer. This was his first time falling asleep without them in weeks. Newt claimed Hermann snored. Would he be able to fall asleep without that? Probably, Hermann reflected. The night sounds of the canopy were enough to lull the most obstinate child to sleep. Even Newton.

But maybe the sound of your dæmon’s breathing was company enough. And then Hermann understood. When they parted ways, as Newton seemed to assume they would, Hermann would go back alone. Newton would not be alone. He never was. He was withdrawing to the familiar shelter of his un-alone solitude.

With a sinking heart, Hermann wondered how many times this had happened. If he had a dæmon, he had no doubt he would hide in the same way. How easy did it become to withdraw from risky, vulnerable human relations when you always had someone to talk to anyway? Was the world of the dæmons perhaps, despite everything, lonelier?

He realized if he was going to ask Newton to join his world instead, he had to do it soon. That night, he dreamed of one of the great trees toppling to the earth. When he woke, he had forgotten the dream. But he rose and walked to the grove nonetheless.

* * *

The morning dawned under cover of mist. When Newt awoke, it was dark; but by the time they reached the forest floor, the world was a bright silvery gray, and he could not have said when the sun had risen.

They walked back towards town as the fog rose from the prairie. He could only see a few yards ahead of him in the mist, but Fern scented all sorts of creatures stirring. Newt was hoping he might yet be early enough to eat breakfast with Hermann. It had been kind of lonely up there. He felt a little strange. He kept feeling like he heard someone speaking to him, a voice, maybe Hermann’s; but there was no one out there but him and his dæmon.

And then there was. A figure was walking unevenly towards them across the prairie. Newt smiled. Hermann.

Fern barked and ran forward to meet him. Newt kept on at the same pace, but Fern’s excitement gave him away. Hermann looked anxious and a little sad. His eyes were kind of bright, sharp the way they were when he was focusing on something small and finicky. Newt realized he was still smiling like an idiot—it just felt like he hadn’t seen him in such a long time.

He reached Hermann. The dew was soaking through his pants and shoes. The mist was so thick the sky was lost, making it impossible tell if it would be a sunny day or a cloudy one. Hermann stopped, leaning on his cane. Newt stopped in front of him. Fern circled around, sniffing the ground.

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

“Hey,” said Newt finally.

“Good morning,” said Hermann. “How was your night?”

“It was fine.”

Hermann raised his eyebrows.

“Kind of lonely, to be honest,” said Newt.

“Oh?”

“I thought I’d come down early and have breakfast,” Newt said. “With you,” he added.

“I understood,” Hermann said in his don’t-be-an-idiot voice, but a softened version. His eyes looked soft. Maybe it was the fog. There was a strange tension in the air. He reached for Newt’s right arm and Newt lifted it automatically. Hermann took his wrist and started unwinding his bite bandage.

“Is it just me,” said Newt, “Or is there something kind of _Wuthering Heights-_ ey about this misty moor right now?”

“Brontёs exist in your universe, then?” said Hermann, examining the bite. It was healing well.

“Evi _dent_ ly,” Newt said in his best Hermann voice. Then he frowned. “What are you doing out here so early?”

Hermann tucked the end of the bandage back in. “Coming to meet you.”

“But... how did you know I would be coming?”

Hermann looked like he hadn’t thought about that.

“Well, you had to come eventually,” he said. “If you hadn’t been down yet, I suppose I would have waited.”

“Of course you would’ve.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” said Newt. “Not—I don’t know. In a good way. I’m glad you came.”

Hermann looked at him. He was still holding his wrist up.

There was a pause.

“I think we need to talk,” Newt said carefully.

“Yes,” said Hermann.

“Now?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

There was another pause. The mist was starting to clear, revealing a cloudy sky. Hermann still held Newt’s wrist. He seemed to be holding it more gently, less like an examiner, but maybe that was Newt’s wishful thinking. Then Hermann lifted his other hand and enclosed Newt’s hand in both of his. He squeezed once, and then let go. The cold air closed in immediately where Hermann’s hands had been for but a second.

Hermann turned and started walking back, but Newt stood still for a moment before following.

“Are you wearing my shirt again?” Hermann asked as Newt caught up.

“Maybe,” said Newt. He balled up the hem of the flannel sleeve, which was so long it hung past his hand, and squeezed it. The mood had suddenly gotten heavy, and he was going to lighten it. “Do you think I need a haircut?” he asked.

Hermann looked at him sideways. “Yes.”

“Do you have scissors?”

“ _I_ don’t know how to cut your hair,” Hermann said.

“Well I sure don’t.”

“I need one as well,” Hermann said, touching the back of his own cropped head. Newt made a face.

“In what universe?” he said. “It’s barely an inch.”

Hermann grimaced.

“I don't think I've seen my own reflection in more than two months,” Hermann said. “Isn’t that strange?”

“It is, but I like it,” said Newt. “Death of the ego.”

“I suppose.”

Newt thought about the fact that Hermann was the only human person who knew what he looked like right now, and he was the only one who knew what Hermann looked like. That felt strange and delicate, like a soap bubble in the air. The people they were right now, in this strange time and place, they only were for each other.

“Hermann—”

“Yes?”

Newt hesitated. “...Nothing.”

Fern listened but did not intervene. He just led the way through the grass as the mist rose away, revealing their little town in dim, cloud-muffled sunlight.

* * *

Every day they spent waiting seemed to pass slower, but this one passed slowest and strangest yet. They did not speak much, argued less; they helped fish and cook, and Hermann took gyroscope measures, and Newt tended to his plants, and still they found themselves looking down the length of an empty afternoon.

“Well,” said Hermann, standing in their yard, at a loss. “I suppose you have some mysterious notes to attend to?”

“Hmm?” said Newt. He fiddled with the stalk of grass he was nervously chewing. “No.”

“Oh.”

Silence stretched unbearably. One of many in their long day.

This would be the last, Hermann decided.

“I have a book,” he said.

“A book?”

“Yes.”

“Hermann...” Newt spat the grass out. “You have had a _book_ all these weeks... And you never... thought to _mention it?_ ”

Hermann never knew he could be so relieved by his companion’s annoyance. “Yes. Only one.”

“All this _time_?”

“I was not aware you were so _bored,_ Newton,” said Hermann acidly. “If you had told me _sooner_ how tedious you find my company, I would have of course given you the book.”

Newt waved his words away. “Don’t even start with me, Gottlieb! Surrender the book.”

It was the complete works of Oscar Wilde. Hermann was at first perturbed when Newt said, “Who?” Then he thought that meant one of two things: either there was no Oscar Wilde in dæmon earth, or there was but he had not found fame, and so perhaps not met the same end. So he let that question be.

Up on the platform, they read out loud until the light was gone. Passing the book back and forth they read _The Importance of Being Earnest,_ with Hermann reading Jack and Cecily’s lines and Newt reading Algie and Gwendolen’s. When Hermann, being Cecily but flatly refusing to affect a voice, read, “‘Oh, I don’t think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn’t know what to talk to him about,” and looked pointedly at Newt, Newt laughed so hard he almost fell. When it got too dark to read, they talked about the play and the author.

“So he’s really that famous?”

“Absolutely,” said Hermann. “Shame for your world, really. His dæmon would have been something else.”

Newt, who was lying with his head on Fern, huffed a laugh.

“Probably something enormous and unmistakable,” Hermann said, staring absently at Newt’s profile in the semidarkness. “Like a bear. Actually, I have been wondering—is there a size limit to a dæmon? Could someone have, say, a giraffe? A whale?”

“Is there a size limit to a person?” said Newt. “No. There’s just normal variation. But people get taller all the time.” He hoisted himself up on his elbow. “I knew a guy once who had a horse.”

Hermann laughed in spite of himself. “A _horse_? Good God! Did he... ride it?”

Newt laughed too. “Ride her? God, I don’t know. I hope not...”

Their laughter, not sardonic or suppressed, rang unnaturally to Hermann’s ear. He felt a return of the hushed tension from the morning descend over their half-lit raft. The moon was not yet up. Maybe the tension arose from the anonymous dark. But even in the dark he could still see Newton. He could see every lock of unruly hair, every tooth of his grin, the bright colorless gleam of his eyes. He seemed unable to look away.

“But there are other historical figures who exist in both worlds,” Hermann said, trying to pull himself back to himself by the sound of his own voice. “Think about it, Newton. Our worlds diverged eons ago, at the very evolutionary level. How could we have _any_ events in common in our societies? Never mind entire human beings in common? It goes beyond statistical improbability. It seems virtually impossible.”

“Whoa. Lots to unpack _there_ ,” Newton said pointedly. “First off, diverged at the evolutionary level? How do you figure that, Hermann?”

“Dæmons, Newton,” he said. “Where else would they come from?”

“That seems like a question of Dust, not evolution, to me,” Newt said.

“What proof do you have of that?”

“Well obviously Dæmons have to do with Dust.”

“But how? And how do you know? Fernweh does not have any Dust on him. We’ve checked. Your assertion that the emergence of dæmons has anything to do with Dust is categorically baseless.”

“Rude, first of all,” said Newt. “And it isn’t baseless. Dust settles on adults, dæmons settle as adults. Coincidence?”

“Is there a ‘coincidence’ between getting acne and adolescence?” Hermann said hotly. “Obviously not. It is _causally_ linked.”

“Then I’m right!” said Newt.

“No, you are not. We are simply listing normal processes of growing up. You grow taller. You become malodorous. Your dæmon settles, in some worlds. These things are caused by growing up. They do not cause each other...”

“I just don’t think it was evolutionary,” said Newt. “I don’t accept your framework.”

“Do you have an _alternate_ framework to propose?” demanded Hermann.

“Yes,” snapped Newt. “But you won’t like it.”

“Oh?”

“No.”

“Well?”

The moon was rising. A hole in the leaves lit the left side of Hermann’s face.

“Dust. Conscious complexifications of Dust known, colloquially, as angels...”

“Oh, good God...”

“... _intervening_ in human development. Intervening in a different way, in my world.”

“Newton, please.”

“They _told_ you this.”

“‘They’ told me nothing of any—”

“Nothing of any importance?” said Newt. He hoisted himself up to fully sit, and jabbed an accusing finger into Hermann’s chest. “You threw your whole life away to do exactly what they said.”

Hermann almost smacked his hand away. “ _Excuse_ me?”

“Seriously, Hermann. Do you listen to yourself? You talk about fate and improbability and how, apparently, extremely improbable events are proof of fate, instead of what they are, which is just very improbable events. But you still can’t stand the idea of fate because it makes you nervous—maybe it’s a control issue, maybe it’s a leftover hangup from your excommunication, I don’t know—”

“Newton! I was not excommunicated!”

“—but you know what Hermann? You’re a big hypocrite. You talk a big game about fate but when it came knocking, you rolled right over and did exactly what it told you to do.”

“You...” Hermann broke off. Part of him was offended by what Newton said; but part of him was attuned to the man's tone, and the dim, desaturated version of his face that he could see. Newton was genuinely upset about something. About what?

Hermann frowned at him. Newt was taken aback by his silence.

He withdrew his hand, which had been hanging awkwardly between them.

“What?”

“You really believe in free will, Newton?”

“What kind of question is that? Of course I do. What else would I believe in?”

“You come from a godly world,” said Hermann. “It is a reasonable question.”

“I don’t consider fate possible. Hermann, it isn’t _rational._ You come from a _rational_ world. Tell me why you believe in predestination.”

“You tell me first why you do not.”

“The burden of proof lies with you, but fine, I'll go first. There’s just no power that could control or foresee all those variables. You’re a math guy, Hermann. You _know_ how many variables it is. It’s literally infinite. Now, if we accept the many-worlds theory—and I think we might have to, given our circumstances—there is a world for each possibility. A world for each and every teeny, tiny, finicky, infinite possibility. Doesn’t that negate fate, control, God? No fate but every single possible fate.”

Hermann saw the loophole and pounced. “Oh, Newton. Perhaps it would. Had not these _angels_ intervened in the course of some histories. Wouldn’t you say?”

Newt reflexively raised a didactic finger and said, loudly, “No, I would not, Hermann.” Hermann could see him doing some very quick, out-loud thinking as he fumbled his way to a rebuttal. Unfortunately, that variety of bullshit was Newton’s forte. “Would you really say the angels constitute fate? Or are they just a form of consciousness, previously unknown to us, intervening of _their_ own free will and interacting with you, to encourage you to take a course they, personally, saw as productive? No different than Lyra interacting with you. She was previously unknown. Many actors, each working to their own goals. Their own _freely_ chosen goals. I seem to recall you saying your angels were _rebel_ angels?” Newt smirked. What a save. “I rest my case.”

“You rest what?” Hermann scoffed. “All you’ve done is speculate wildly about creatures about whom we have no proof other than their word...”

“Oh, but their word seems to hold enough weight with _you,_ ” Newt said, poking his chest again. “You smashed up your lab and ran off to another _world,_ Hermann!”

“A mistake, I suppose?” Hermann said heatedly. “Is that what you think?”

“Obviously not!”

“What, then?” said Hermann. “You seem to take issue with my actions, yet, had I not listened, I would never have come to the world of the mulefa, and I would not be _stuck_ on this _platform_ with _you!_ ”

“Right, so that’s how you see this!” Newt said loudly. “Stuck! Are you stuck here, with me, Hermann? Thus fate dictates, so you just _sigh_ and accept your destiny, however tiresome and illogical he is?”

“Newton—”

“I’m going to be honest, Hermann,” Newt said, sounding it. “No, really. I’ve been half-kidding, but sometimes I get the feeling that’s what you really think of me—that I’m just someone you were destined to be _stuck_ with, and if you had a choice you would just go—”

“Newton!”

“—and meanwhile, I’m driving the free will train full tilt, and you know where I drove it, Hermann? Did you notice where I drove it? Here! With you! And I don’t—”

Hermann grabbed Newt by the front of the shirt and kissed him.

A wave seemed to crash over Hermann’s face, chest, lips, heart. Newt made a muffled noise of surprise. His hand fluttered and landed on Hermann’s hand, on his shirt, and gripped it. Hermann slid his other hand around Newt’s cheek and behind his neck. He was committed now—hesitation was dead—and Newton did not seem to mind.

“You—really are the stupidest man I’ve ever met—” Hermann said breathlessly, and kissed Newt again— “if you think that’s what I—”

The obvious end of his sentence was lost as Newt wrapped his good arm around Hermann’s neck and kissed him like a war had ended. If he had hesitated at first, it was only a matter of habit. But in this world, it did not matter. In this world they were safe. He kissed Hermann back with unmistakable, joyful enthusiasm, like he had been waiting, waiting, waiting.

As indeed he had been.

In a strange way he felt he had only realized this morning, but that he had been waiting for weeks. And as he held Hermann close he thought, perhaps hyperbolically, he would have waited however long it took.

For Hermann, it was his rarest sort of moment, when rattling thoughts and concerns were overtaken by the moment itself, and he was lost, completely lost, to the experience. He was absorbed by the feeling of Newton’s closeness, his agile and eager mouth, his rough stubble, his nose, his hand, his breath. Every quick inhale and sighing exhale, warm, smelling familiar but stronger, headier, broke against Hermann’s lips and cheek and nose and filled him with a fierce indefinable joy.

Newt spread his hand open against Hermann’s face and cupped his cheek, tipping his chin back to pull away and breathe for a second. Hermann chased his lips like a tireless or intoxicated teenager. In that uncalculated gesture Newt suddenly saw how far gone Hermann was. All stiff, strict Gottlebian restraint was obliterated: he was committed absolutely, lost helplessly. Newt realized it with a swelling, swaying intensity that moved and frightened him.

Newt kissed him again, gently, and then put his hand on the back of Hermann’s head and pressed their foreheads together. For a moment they breathed.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“You good?”

Hermann nodded, moving both their heads. His range of perception was slowly expanding again, against his wishes. From Newton’s face looming against his like a planet hanging close in the sky, the warmth of his breath, to his shoulder touching Hermann’s and his hand on the back of Hermann’s head, to the platform beneath them, to the umbrella of branches above. All he wanted was to stay in this bubble, but the moment was trickling away as quick as Dust. Now he could hear the leaves swish again and see the stars above and feel the future that had always lain ahead, feel it circling again.

Hermann shook his head slightly. Newt wished he knew what his research partner was thinking.

“Don’t be scared,” he murmured, not knowing why. Maybe it was more to himself.

Hermann closed his eyes.

“Do you remember, um...” Newt lifted his hand and began stroking Hermann's hair absently. He felt it important to fill the airwaves with something, for both Hermann’s sake and his own. “Do you remember when I said I ‘decided’ it was you? That you were the one I was supposed to find?”

“Yes,” said Hermann softly.

“I said it was when you told me about Dust?”

“Yes.”

“I was lying. It was before that.”

Hermann opened his eyes, which were so close Newt could hardly focus on them. He didn’t try. Instead he kept running his fingers, with equal parts anxiety and fondness, through Hermann’s hair.

“It was a day or two before that. You were still pretty cagey, but I got you to tell me about your cane. You told me how Anku helped you make it. The whole process: picking the stick, sanding it, lacquering it. I liked the way you talked about it. You thought about the process like an investigator and like an engineer, and a bit like an artist. And I just thought...” Newt sighed. “I don’t know, I just thought you were someone I could work with. I guess I was right.”

Hermann smiled. “First time for everything,” he said.

Even in the dark up-close he could see Newton's eyes roll and lips quirk. “Excuse me,” he said. “I am _always_ right.”

Hermann closed the little distance and kissed Newton again. He felt his impulsiveness wearing off, but he was afraid to lose it. Newt kissed him back slowly.

“Extravagantly inaccurate, as usual,” Hermann murmured, pulling away.

“You love it,” said Newt, chasing his lips. Hermann let himself be caught.

They talked deep into the night. When they slept they lay side by side, Newt curled so the bend of his back touched Hermann’s mast-straight side, infinitely close like a curve and its tangent.


	7. Tempest

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For ambiance that is both thematically and concretely relevant, you may want to turn [this](https://youtu.be/Cxj8vSS2ELU) on as you read. 
> 
> The last chapter is underway, and will hopefully be posted soon. Sorry these last two chapters are taking a little longer - I am on a rural farm for the month of June, and have no laptop. But I am doing my best!
> 
> Happy pride!

Hermann awoke troubled by a dream that vanished before he could look it in the eye. Like most mornings, fog filled the forest. It was so thick they could see neither the ground below nor the leaves above. It was like their raft was floating inside a cloud.

Then like the sun breaking through, Hermann remembered. The pressure on his stomach was not his arm; it was Newton’s. He shifted carefully. The naturalist was curled towards Hermann, his head just touching Hermann's side and his arm thrown over Hermann's stomach, like a koala holding a tree.

For a peaceful moment Hermann watched Newton’s hand rise and fall with the movement of his own breathing. Did koalas exist in his world? Maybe they were sentient like the polar bears. He looked down at Newton's face. Hermann had seen the naturalist asleep before, but he was always disarmed by the sight. Newton with his little frown and without his glasses. He looked so young.

He snuffled in his sleep, and suddenly Hermann felt like a voyeur. They had not yet been together long enough for habituation, for a physical rapport. Newton’s body still belonged to him, and Hermann’s to himself. It felt strange to touch him now. For a moment, watching, Hermann had felt a tender anticipation of building this rapport; but now it seemed impossible, and he wished the rapport already existed or never would.

Everything was going to change, Hermann thought with sudden panic.

As if he could sense it, Newt opened his eyes. Near his feet, Fern raised his head and yawned.

“Morning,” Newt said, without looking up at Hermann or removing his arm.

“Good morning,” said Hermann, voice hoarse.

“Sleep well?”

“Fine,” said Hermann, without considering the true answer or whether Newton would want it. He was thinking about Newton’s arm and how sore he was and how he wanted to get up and stretch and maybe be alone.

Newt must have heard some of that in his voice, for he looked up. His eyes met Hermann’s blurrily.

“I should have known you wouldn’t be a mushy morning person,” Newt said. “Where are my glasses? I can’t see shit.”

“Above your head. Ten o’clock.”

Newton reached for them, freeing Hermann at last. He was out of his sleeping bag before Newton had finished putting his glasses on.

They collected their things without much conversation or contact. This began to concern Newt. He and Fern went down first, strapping into the harness and lowering themselves slowly with the pulleys. On the forest floor, the mist was beginning to clear, but it still hid the platform above.

They waited for Hermann.

“Does he seem okay?” Newt said.

“Hermann?” said Fernweh.

“Yeah.” Newt made a face. “I felt like he was being a little short.”

“Don’t know. But if you’re picking up on something, it’s probably there,” Fern said. “You know him well.”

“Yeah, I do.” He glanced at his dæmon. “You do too.”

Fern made a noncommittal sound. “I’d know him better if I could see his dæmon.”

“I guess,” said Newt. They both gazed up, waiting for Hermann to emerge from the cloud.

“You know what’s strange?” said Fern. “Last night, I almost thought I saw them. His dæmon.”

“What? When?”

“When you were kissing. Just for a second.”

“What did it—she?—look like.”

“All I saw was wings.”

Newt looked away, feeling awed by this.

Fern looked upwards.

“Wouldn’t have thought of him as someone flighty,” Newt said at last.

“Birds don’t mean flighty. Depends on the bird, anyway. It could have been an owl.”

“Oh, that would be a good one,” said Newt, grinning. “I don’t know though. I thought of him as someone more... steady.”

“True,” said Fern. “You know, that may be what he’s fretting about. Change. I don’t think he likes change.”

“But nothing has changed.”

Fern looked at his human. “Newt.”

“What?”

“So, we kiss now, big deal. We’re still the same people.”

“Things have changed. And will keep changing. You shouldn’t act like it’s not a big deal.”

“So change is bad even if it's change for the better?”

“I only say Hermann doesn’t like change because _I_ don’t like change,” said Fern. “Sometimes, yes, even change for the better.”

The dark shape of Hermann materialized some twenty feet overhead. They watched him descend.

“I wish things could keep being easy,” Newt murmured. “I wish they could just stay the same.”

“Nothing is ever the same,” Fern said as Hermann touched ground. He bounded forward to greet him.

“ _Grüß Gott,_ Fernweh,” Hermann said, sounding fond. He always seemed to react most warmly to Fern when he acted most like a dog. Fern snuffled around his pack as he undid himself from the harness.

Newt was thinking about what his dæmon had said, and so kept quiet, giving Hermann space. He wasn’t going to overthink this, actually. He was going to handle it with his killer instinct, and he was going to handle it beautifully. His killer instinct for relationships? For being the world’s—scratch that, the multiverse’s—most attentive boyfriend? No, not that, although yes, that. But most of all, his killer instinct for Hermann’s moods. So what if he tended to ignore the data and say whatever he felt like? That didn’t mean he wasn’t receiving the data. He was always receiving it.

So when Hermann had his pack on and gave Newt his ‘Ready’ eyebrow raise, Newt nodded, stepped over, and held out his hand. Hermann took it, and gently tugged the bandage off his forearm. He looked at his bite.

It must have looked okay, because he nodded. He tucked the end back into the bandage. Before Hermann could drop Newt’s hand, Newt took his. He didn’t have a plan. It just seemed like the thing to do. The look on Hermann’s face told him he was right.

They walked in silence across the un-silent prairie. They both thought of the morning before. _Everything looks different,_ thought Newt with delight. _Everything looks the same_ , thought Hermann with confusion, for he felt it should not.

“Kind of convenient, don't you think,” said Newt lightly, “That you broke my left arm and you use your cane with your right arm?”

“What are you suggesting?” said Hermann. “That I had a long-term plan involving holding hands with you?”

“No, not that,” said Newt. “I just think I'm starting to come around to your destiny theory.”

Hermann tried to drop his hand.

“No! I'm joking, Hermann, I'm sorry.”

Hermann gave him a familiar deadly look. Newt smiled. He was in the clear.

“Come on. As if I would ever agree with any of your theories.”

“None of _my_ theories involve angels and magic,” Hermann said disdainfully.

“It is true though, that there's a lot about us that could have clashed horribly.”

“You say that as if we have not clashed, in almost every respect.”

“You're such a pessimist,” said Newt. “Look how much we've accomplished by working together!”

“In my view we have accomplished those things despite our differences,” Hermann said.

“I'll try not to take that as an insult,” Newt said good naturedly. They had almost reached town.

“Don't try,” said Hermann.

“Don't try to—” began Newt, but suddenly he felt a spark of Fern’s intrigue. He had scented something on the air. The coyote dove ahead, veering to the left, away from town. He started barking. Newt and Hermann both looked where his nose pointed. Two small human figures, not quite full-grown, were making their way down the slope towards the town.

Hermann gripped Newt’s hand. “It’s them.”

The kids had spotted them and Lyra was waving uncertainly. The two pairs approached each other until Lyra recognized Hermann and cried out.

“Dr. Gottlieb!”

She rushed forward and wrapped him in a fierce, unexpected hug.

“Hello, Lyra,” he said, surprised.

She stepped back, beaming, and with his hands on her shoulders he looked at her. Lyra looked older. She was clean, but worn down. He’d never seen a child with such tired eyes.

Hermann found himself surprisingly affected by her presence. They had met so briefly; yet everything he had done came back to her. Maybe, if the angels were to be believed, everything in his whole life. Looking at her, this beaming, exhausted, resilient child, he felt that was worth it. His fear that her arrival would signal the end of something vanished completely. Instead he felt that something was about to begin.

“I believe you know my colleague,” he said finally, and she looked at Newton for the first time.

“My God,” she said. “The Nutty Naturalist!”

Hermann actually laughed. Newt rolled his eyes, but he was grinning. “Come here, kiddo,” he said, and she gave him a hug too. “ _See?”_ mouthed Newt to Hermann, over her shoulder. “Not even worth it.” Hermann only smirked.

“What on earth are you doing here?” she asked.

“Nothing _on_ earth,” he said. “We have got quite a world to show you kids. Are you going to introduce your friend?”

Will had been hanging back hesitantly. The boy was around thirteen, the same age as Lyra, and had the same look of utter exhaustion. But Hermann could see he was not trusting and open like his companion. There was something more worldly about his eyes, something harder.

It was that hardness that made Hermann, against his usual impulses, pull the strange boy into a hug.

“Good to meet you, Will,” Hermann said over his shoulder.

Will, pulled into a hug by Lyra’s Scholar, stood stiff for a moment. But it had been so long since an adult, let alone a man, showed him any kind of tenderness. Will closed his eyes. He let himself be held for a moment.

It was still a stiff sort of hug, but when the professor let go, Will felt he had made a friend for life. And indeed he had.

Newt shook hands with Will, asking how he had handled Lyra’s shenanigans, and then they brought the children into town to meet the mulefa.

* * *

When everyone had gotten acquainted, they ate breakfast with Atal and a few other townsfolk. The kids met the muelfa with proper wonder, but it was clear they had seen far stranger things but lately. Whatever they had been through was still raw. It would not bear discussing so early in the day. Perhaps not even today at all. So Hermann and Newt talked about this world, explaining the interdependencies and all they had learned. Lyra liked the way the two scientists interrupted and corrected and expanded each other’s sentences. She was glad to be with familiar, but neutral faces.

In the late morning sun, the children fell asleep in the grass. Hermann and Newt went about their daily duties. In the evening, they woke the kids for dinner, and then put them up in their hut for the night. They sat outside, talking with Atal as the sun set. Where had the children been? And where were their dæmons?

Around sunset, a group of unfamiliar mulefa rode up to them. They were from a neighboring settlement. With agitation they explained that something had appeared near their town, and they needed a human.

Hermann and Atal went. They sped into the gathering night and through it, further south than Hermann had gone before. After an hour they reached it.

There were a few mulefa hovering nearby as he and Atal approached it cautiously. It looked, from here, like a window, but it was far wider than those he had seen, at least six feet long. Its other side was murky and lightless, a mauve darkness. Pouring from it were ghosts. When they saw the ghosts, they stopped. Hermann put his hand on Atal’s shoulder. She made a soft sound.

The ghosts came out in waves—for ghosts they were, surely, immaterial and translucent figures, human for the seconds they became visible—and dissolved in an instant. They stepped through the window, and in the seconds before they disappeared, they looked around themselves. At the vast prairie, the grass, the flowers, the stars. And then they vanished into it, becoming part of it. Wave after wave they came. The looks on their pale faces were of such radiant joy and relief as Hermann had never seen.

Some held together for a second or two before they vanished. One, an older woman, held together long enough to approach them. Hermann started towards her, wiping his eyes.

She reached for his hand and he held it out. Hers just passed right through. She did not seem to notice. She leaned in.

“Tell them stories...”

And then she was gone.

* * *

The next day, Hermann and Newt took Lyra and Will with them to work. They fished, and the children told their tale. It took the whole day, from morning through afternoon.

Lyra liked telling, and did most of the talking. She did not embellish as much as she might once have, for the cries of the harpies still rang in her ears. Will added when he saw fit, or when things had happened to him alone. He showed them the subtle knife, the tool that made the windows between worlds and of which he was now the bearer. The Scholars were a good audience. Dr. Gottlieb listened attentively, and the naturalist asked lots of questions, except when Will told of his father. He became quiet. She felt for him, wondering what kind of sadness it was he felt for his dead friend.

In the evening, the children went for a walk while Hermann and Newt made dinner. Hermann felt better than he had the morning before, in his moment of panic. He glanced at Newton, who was idly scratching his chin with the thumb of his bound arm, eyes obscured by the cooking fire reflected in his glasses.

“Newton,” he said.

“Mhm?”

“Have you thought about the future?” Hermann said.

Newt looked up at him. His eyes became visible, green and sharp.

“The future?”

All Hermann’s momentum vanished under Newt’s eyes. It had seemed easy to ask the question; now, Newt turned it back to him with careless ease. But Newton had never had a problem asking Hermann the hard questions.

“You know what I mean,” Herman prevaricated. “After this.”

“I guess I think about it, yeah,” said Newt. “It would be hard not to.”

“You expect to return home?”

“Yes, I think we plan to return home,” Newt said with a glance at his dæmon. “Not that we really had one, at the point when we left. I don’t know where Lyra is going, but I expect us to take her there, I suppose. After that, I don’t know.”

“What if—” Hermann hesitated, his throat becoming oddly tight— “Newton, what if you came home with me?”

“With you?” Newt’s voice spiked an octave on the last word. “To—you mean to your house? In your world? In your Oxford?”

“Obviously,” said Hermann, feeling some measure of relief at Newt’s fluster. “Yes. Obviously. I have been meaning to suggest it for some time. There are several reasons for this: first, what you have already said, that you do not have a home in your world. Second, in a broader sense, your world has been inhospitable to you, your identity, and your work. My world is more—accepting...” Even as he said it, Hermann knew Newt would be unable to conceive of what that meant. And even as he said, “You would be able to study your areas of interest without fear of censorship,” he realized Newton did not have the knowledge base of the average evolutionary biologist in his world, not even close; his world was decades behind.

Newton’s face was unreadable. “So this offer is solely for my benefit?”

“If you would let me finish,” said Hermann tersely. Newt really wasn’t going to make this easy for him, was he? “Third. We work well together. I would, personally, appreciate having you in my life, possibly for professional pursuits, and certainly for... personal pursuits.”

“‘Personal pursuits,’ eh,” Newt said with a note of mischief. “Is that what the kids call it these days?”

Hermann said nothing. He had said all he could stand to say.

“Well listen, Hermann...” Newt at last dropped his eyes. “I appreciate the offer, I really do. But I don’t think it’s that easy.”

“Why not?” Hermann said with immediate obstinacy.

“You’re right that my home is inhospitable. But it is, after all, my home. I don’t feel right leaving it.”

“But Newton—”

“Excuse me, not finished. Starting with the weakest arguments. Weakest: a vague feeling of unease. Next, slightly stronger: my work. I have no career in your world. I don’t exist there. And I don’t know the things your scientists know. Christ, Hermann, I don’t even know what the disciplines are _called_. I still call you an ‘experimental theologian’ in my head, even though you, in your logical world, call yourself a ‘physicist.’ I don't even know what kind of scientist I would _pretend_ to be.”

“You underestimate yourself, Newton,” said Hermann fiercely. “You are intelligent enough to learn such things. And as to your objection about your career, you are quick to forget your mentor Stan Grumman. As we learned today, he did this exact thing: he came from one world to another and built himself a scientific career. You can do the same. And you will have my help.”

“But he went the _other_ way, Hermann,” Newt said. “He went from your more advanced world to mine. You’re not thinking about it from my position—I don’t even see my world as backwards. I know you do. But I can’t think of it like that. It’s the status quo to me. It’s my whole frame of reference. I can’t put anything you say on a scale—studying evolution? ‘Acceptance’? Of what? Being Jewish? Loving men?”

“Yes!” said Hermann, exasperated but upset. “It is not perfect, but it's much better! You are being deliberately obtuse, Newton! I know you have the imagination to conceptualize these things, and even if you haven’t, it doesn’t matter. They are still true, and you can simply come find out!”

“Of course it matters! I’m not being obtuse, Hermann, you are. You’re forgetting my last and most obvious issue, which is my _dæmon._ ”

“...People have pets! It may be difficult to explain but—”

“Hermann, don’t be ridiculous! People don’t have mangy black coyotes as pets. There would be _no_ way to make people understand how harmless he is.”

“We can figure something out, Newton.”

“I don’t see what! It’s not that I don’t want it. But it’s a pipe dream. You’re not being practical, man. _I’m_ being practical, for once.”

“You are being unnecessarily pessimistic!” said Hermann angrily. “I’ve thought about these things, Newton, of course I have!” _I felt the same conclusions lurking beneath, but I ignored them,_ he did not say. He was upset because Newton was right. “But—but—”

“You can’t come live with me,” Newton was saying. “Having no dæmon is even worse. And they’d find out about us eventually, and we’d be in trouble. I mean real trouble. I guess we could run away to New Amsterdam, but even there, it isn’t that safe...”

“So you’re saying...”

Normally, arguing with Newton was like climbing an endless staircase. Landing after landing, he never found the top. And no matter how out of breath he got, he kept on. Abruptly, Hermann found himself at the top. He did not want to finish his sentence.

_So you’re saying we can’t be together._

Newton broke off too. Their eyes met. Newton looked afraid, suddenly. Perhaps he had reached the end too, the end of the painful things he would force Hermann to say. The sentence stayed unfinished.

Suddenly Newt stood.

“I think we should go,” he said.

Hermann’s stomach dropped. “Go?”

“Just for tonight. Fern and I. We’ll sleep on the platform.”

“Oh—of course.” Hermann felt deeply uneasy.

Newt stood awkwardly for a second. Fern was still sitting.

“Should we go after dinner?”

Hermann stared. “Are you asking me?”

“No,” said Newt. “No, we’ll go now.”

He stepped round the cooking fire and, bending down, kissed Hermann on the top of the head.

“See you tomorrow,” he said.

Hermann did not move as Newt went inside, got his things, and reemerged. With a silent wave, he and his dæmon left. The pressure from Newton's kiss seemed to remain, like a bruise. He sat still until the smell of their food burning broke him from his reverie. When he moved, the feeling faded from his head. It felt deeply wrong to him that Newton should go, alone, to the platform, but he did not know why. If the man needed his space, that was fine. But anxiety sat deep and heavy in the pit of his heart.

* * *

By the time they had eaten, the sun was setting. Hermann sat with Atal and the children under a tree by the whispering river, and told his story.

He began with his life before Lyra. He explained his work with the dark matter research, with Oliver, and how Lyra had turned it all upside down. He had done as she told him, he said, and made the machine speak to the Dust. They told him they were angels.

Since her and Will’s story, he and Newt knew that angels were as real as the rest. But, as the rest, it seemed too dark and fantastical to be really true. It must be, Hermann thought, but its wild truths had not yet sunk into the rational parts of his brain.

He did not say, of course, to Lyra, that he did not ‘believe’ her story, for that was not quite true. He accepted it as a conditional truth, like a theory that could not be proven, but had to be accepted in order to conceptualize other sorts of progress.

Oddly enough it was Will who sensed his reticence. “Angels?” he said. “And you believed them, even though you were a scientist?”

“It’s difficult to say,” Hermann said. He was less uncomfortable explaining this to them than he was to Newton. “I accepted that I was speaking to some unknown consciousness, a form of life that I did not understand. I found it difficult to believe that they were angels. Particularly because of my religious background.”

“What religious background?” said Will.

“Before I was a professor, I was in training to be priest,” Hermann said.

Will raised his eyebrows to Lyra. She nodded in confirmation.

“Why did you quit?” Will asked.

“A number of reasons,” Hermann said, which was true.

_Tell them stories._

“Perhaps you need to understand first why I thought it right to become a priest in the first place.”

The children nodded.

“My father was very devout,” he explained. “It was always his wish. I think he wanted me to become an important leader in the church, so that he could wield some of this power by proxy. Why he thought I had the disposition for that... type of role.... I never understood. But he was always a father to that concept of me, and never to my actual self. He remained so until I left the church; perhaps he remains so to this day. He has not spoken to me since I left it.

“Of course, I had personal reasons for religious devotion. I think that a drive towards higher truth was one. I went to university, studied physics, and then began divinity school in conjunction with my masters. It did not take long to see that the internal workings of the church organization were _not_ in pursuit of any higher truth. They were in pursuit of power, like my father, and they used it to intimidate and coerce and steal.

“In my scientific studies, there was stability. With my rational mind, I understood that physics was better than religion, for me. But it took a long time for me to understand that with my emotions. By that time, religion had rotted in me. Confusion turned to mistrust and disgust.”

“What was it that made you understand, emotionally?” Lyra asked. “When did you finally leave?”

“I remember the moment exactly,” Hermann said, his voice growing steadier as he stepped into the current of his story. “I went to a conference. A physics conference. It was in Italy, on the coast. I come from a cold place, so I have always loved warm beaches and sea air... It was the evening, after a long day of vigorous discussion, and I was out at dinner with some colleagues and new acquaintances. We sat on a terrace under the stars, among candles and vines with some sort of fragrant flower, and a quartet was playing.

“You see, I chose the course of priesthood when I was very young. Too young to have ever fallen in love. I always told myself that love was another country—many people visited, and maybe they saw interesting or beautiful things there. But I did not need to visit. There were equally interesting things to be discovered at home.

“On this night, however, I found myself charmed by one of our new acquaintances. He was a scientist from Argentina, and he was a warm and genuine and clever man. As I conversed with him, I started to see over the border into that other country. And slowly, perhaps with the onset of the wine, I started to think how many ways I had been fooling myself. That I was all right, just fine, being always alone. That I was all right, just fine, living for people who would excommunicate me if they knew I could fall in love with this man. That I was all right, that I believed in what I was doing. Then I heard the music.

“The quartet was playing Tchaikovsky. _Romeo and Juliet._ I hadn’t heard the piece in a decade. But suddenly I remembered. I was thirteen, I was at a church piano recital. A boy my age played an arrangement of _Romeo and Juliet_ and I had been very taken with it. Downstairs, in the after-recital social, I approached him and told him how much I had admired his playing. He brought me excitedly back up to the piano and showed me the sheet music—he had a duet version. Could I sight read well enough, he asked? Would I try? I said I would. We played. It was halting and imperfect, but the tune carried through. There was one phrase in particular that gave me difficulty. I could not get the fingering quite right. The boy said _here_ and took my hand, and guided my fingers to the right keys. I fell in love in an instant, just for the gentle way he guided me.”

Unnoticed by Hermann, Lyra was sitting forward. She hugged her knees and sat very still. Inside her, great chords were striking.

“We finished the piece together. Our music teacher had come in, and said we played well as a duet. So for a few weeks, we practiced together. It was in the second, or perhaps the third practice that we kissed. We were both so frightened and shy that it seemed impossible, it seemed neither of us would move. But then we did. We kissed, and everything was...”

Hermann faltered. His memory was so vivid but distant, like a movie he had once watched. He was not a storyteller, really; he did not know how to turn such powerful emotions into words for them.

“...It _was_ another country. Or maybe it was paradise. But sitting there on the terrace, smiling at the man from Argentina, with _Romeo and Juliet_ filling the air, I remembered suddenly that I had been there. I had been to that country. And the question became urgent. More important even than god or physics. Would I ever go again? After all, what could be more important?” He murmured, “What could be.”

His eyes roamed the top of the tree under which they sat, watching the dark, trembling silhouettes of leaves. Lyra watched him.

“So I left the church.”

“Did you see him again?” Lyra asked.

“Yes,” said Herman. “A few times. And for a time, during my doctorate, I lived with someone—Martin was his name—who I met at Oxford.”

“You were in love?”

“Yes,” said Hermann. “For a time. But now I live alone.”

“Not now,” said Lyra. “You live with the naturalist.”

Hermann frowned at her sadly, because suddenly he had to stop himself from crying.

“For now, yes,” he said, quietly. “You’re right. But only while we’re here. And we don’t know how long that will be.”

In the dim nighttime light, Lyra’s eyes searched his. She looked at him as if he had told her something important, far more important than all the fabulous and terrifying truths she had told him. And maybe he had.

* * *

Hermann could not sleep. He was alone on his narrow bed in the hut, the children were sleeping under the tree by the river and Newton was in the canopy. He tossed and turned. But it was not pain, not his hip, not even his internal conflict about Newton, keeping him awake. What possessed him was inaccessible but unignorable, no more substantial than a forgotten dream and no less urgent.

Finally he got up. He took his cane and binoculars and stalked outside. The moon was high and bright as a searchlight. It lit a world wild with wind. Hermann walked fast, out of town, out into the prairie. The grass roiled around him like a storm-tossed sea. Above, clouds raced across the sky like a school of fleeing fish. He could see the grove a half mile off, heaving and swaying. Somewhere in there, Newton was sleeping.

Why? Why? Hermann felt like he was sleepwalking, yet like he had never been more alive. He felt like the whole planet, the whole universe, maybe every universe, was crying out. Why? The question that steered his life. He raised the binoculars and squinted up at the sky. There was the dreaded upper current of Dust—but it was no current now. It was a torrent. It rushed across the sky the way water plunges off the edge of a waterfall, away from their world, away from their minds, away from the trees and the seeds and the people and all that the Dust made good. From all the matter in all the universes to which it had given self-awareness, it fled.

But matter did not give up. The clouds, the wind, the trees, everything was rushing to push it back. Hermann could see, through his binoculars. They were no more than twigs damming a flood, but how could they know that? Matter loved Dust. It would keep trying and trying until the last speck of Dust trickled away.

And so too did Hermann. And so too would Hermann. Was he not matter? And Dust as well?

“Don’t go!” he shouted to the wild sky. Nothing but a twig against the flood. “Stop! Don’t go!” He was one of the clouds, wishing to stop the unstoppable. And he would not give up, not until he shouted himself hoarse.

* * *

Hermann was wrong about one thing. Newt was not sleeping. He was wide awake, lying on his back in the center of the raft. All night it pitched and tossed like a real raft in a real storm. He gripped Fern. They were not afraid, exactly, but they could feel the fire, the desperate aliveness of the world.

Fernweh kept wondering if a tree would be blown down. Their tree. Newt heard his thoughts and pinged back that it would not. But they did not speak. Silently they witnessed the torrent above.

At last the wind began to die down as the moon began to sink. Newt thought he might be able to sleep. He rose slowly, testing the stability of his raft like someone leaving their basement after a tornado to assess the damage. He pressed with his feet, shifting, feeling its normal, slight give. Fern stretched and padded to the edge of the raft.

It was an unusually clear night, and the moon was bright on the water. On the sea breeze, Fern smelled something unusual. Newt followed Fern to the edge and squinted out towards the shore. It was a few hundred yards away, so they could only see crannies of ocean through the branches and trunks. The shimmering moonlight moved strangely. Newt reached for the binoculars, then remembered Hermann had them. No, that was not moonlight. It looked like sailboats.

With a shared chill, Newt and Fern realized they were seeing the tualapi. There were three in a triangle formation. Through the branches they watched the sails reach the shore. But they did not land; a tiny shape emerged from one of them like a bug. It went to shore, and the birds turned and sailed away as fast as they had come.

The bug shape was so distant and contextually wrong that Newt did not recognize it at first. But it walked towards the trees, getting closer, and he realized it was a man. It was too far to see any distinguishing features, but a great foreboding filled him. He reached for Fern.

They watched the man walk inland. He moved between the avenues of moonlight, staying in the shadows. He headed vaguely north, away from town. He did not come close enough to see their ropes and pulleys. Newt and Fern watched him until he vanished among the trees.

* * *

The next day, the third day of Lyra and Will’s stay, they decided it was time at last to search for their dæmons. Hermann was anxious to let them wander, and fussed over their provisions before finally seeing them off. They promised to be back before dark. He went about his daily work, thinking about the kids and about Newton, who had yet to return. Hermann could not stop thinking about the windstorm, picturing it knocking their tree down, smashing their platform to splinters. Newton and his dæmon wouldn’t stand a chance.

These violent visions were so persistent and specific that Hermann started to think he had dreamed them and forgotten. But before he could panic about premonitions, Newton and Fernweh returned.

Newt explained they had not fallen asleep until the early morning, and so not woken until noon. On the way back, they had spotted the children from a distance. “We waved,” Newt said, “But they seemed pretty absorbed in each other.”

Without another word Hermann pulled Newton into a hug. Newt held onto him with his good arm, his broken one squeezed between them. Hermann had never hugged him before. He hugged tight. Newt’s broken arm was pressed so hard against Hermann’s chest that he felt his heart thumping. What an anxious mess Hermann was, Newt thought, not without fondness. Then for no reason he felt like crying. He tightened his arm around Hermann’s shoulders and buried his face in Hermann’s neck. Now Newt felt his heartbeat there too. He let Hermann’s pulse and breath take over his senses until the sadness ebbed back into the nothingness whence it came.

Their afternoon passed quietly. The silent embrace seemed to have marked a change, or maybe the air had changed. Maybe this season, the sunshine season, was finally ending. Or maybe another storm was coming, and this was the calm before it.

But the evening brought no storm. It brought the two kids, hand in hand, over the rise.

Newt saw them first and nudged Hermann. He looked, and knew at once what had happened, and that his story had been the last push towards it. The two held hands, leaned in close together, walked like it mattered not one whit where.

Newton was urgently tapping his chest with the back of his hand. “Hermann. Hermann. The binoculars.”

In a slow trance, Hermann handed them over. Newton looked.

“Good God...”

He passed the binoculars to Hermann. The physicist already knew what he would see.

Dust.

It was falling.

He magnified, searching for the great current. But it was gone. The air above the prairie was filled with a glittering flurry of Dust, falling down to earth again, falling as thick as snow. And it swirled thickest and brightest around the two of them, blissfully in love in the afternoon sun.

* * *

After dinner, Lyra and Will slept under the tree again. Hermann and Newt cleaned up dinner, and when Hermann turned around, Newt was collecting his things from his side of the hut.

“Don’t go,” Hermann said without thinking.

Newt looked up.

“Are you going to the platform?” Hermann asked.

Newt nodded.

“Don’t,” said Hermann in a low voice.

“Why not?” said Newt, just as quietly.

Because the assassin is out there, Hermann thought. Because I’m afraid our tree will fall. Because I want you to stay. Because I’m afraid. Because I want you to stay.

“Just stay,” said Hermann. His voice was barely more than a whisper.

Newt moved towards him.

“Just... please,” Hermann said.

“All right,” said Newt, reaching him. His hand was slipping around Hermann’s waist. “All right, Hermann.”

Newt kissed him. He moved slowly and Hermann responded slowly, but he moved with intent. He tipped his chin forward and pressed into Hermann, then drew him back again in a shallow arc. Hermann lifted his hand to Newt’s cheek with a tremor.

“Don’t go,” Hermann whispered again when Newt pulled away.

“All right,” Newt murmured, and kissed him again.

“Don’t go back without me,” said Hermann.

“I won’t.”

“I mean—I mean home.”

“I know. I won’t. I’m going with you.”

Hermann’s other hand stopped its northward progress up his spine. “You’re what?”

“You heard me,” Newt said, not stopping any progress. Hermann was stock-still so Newt kissed under his jaw and down his neck. “I said—I'm going to come with you. You’ll never—get rid of me—”

Before Newt knew it, he'd been spun around and pinned to the wall and Hermann’s mouth was on his and his breath was gone, his breath was Hermann’s. The man kissed him like it was an urgent message he had to deliver—not with desperation, but with a single-minded thoroughness and just a hint of hopeless devotion. Newt had expected nothing less.

In due time, Hermann moved them to the tiny bed and divested them of their clothes with the same passionate expeditiousness. Sleeping with Hermann reminded Newt in some undefinable way of flying across the tundra. In his arms there was some quality of the icy reach, perhaps of its adventure, its harsh freedom. But there was also a safety and belonging that he had rarely felt in bed. In this security lay a path to discovery, a mystery to be solved and deepened and solved again. In that way, perhaps Hermann more embodied the world of the mulefa.

Newt made love to him with no thought to the future. There were moments of passion where a puff of air seemed to come from nowhere, or a sound like fluttering wings, and Fern thought for sure he saw the dæmon close overhead. And when it was over, they slept on blankets on the floor, where there was enough space to sleep without crowding each other. Hermann lay on his back and Newt lay on his stomach, curled towards his partner, their heads close and their arms tangled together.

* * *

The Dust was fixed by Lyra and Will, but not soon enough to save every wheel-pod tree. That night in the wind-tossed grove by the sea, one last tree fell. Perhaps it had been sick for too long; or perhaps the Dust itself had ideas. The tree’s death was unseen. Hermann Gottlieb did not see it fall. Nor did Newton Gieszler or Fernweh, because they had stayed at home safely. And it was not seen by Father Gomez or his dæmon, sleeping lightly among the roots nearby. They were woken by the great rumble and crack, loud as thunder. But by that time it was too late. They were crushed by a dark tower before they knew what it was.

The beetle daemon of the assassin Father Gomez vanished into nothing. The body of the assassin Father Gomez was never found or searched for. One day, all that would be left was the metal rifle and the little gold ring with the cross, rusting away among the ropes and splinters of the scientists’ platform.

* * *

Lyra and Will did not search for their dæmons the next day, though they knew the dæmons were close by. Instead they helped the mulefa with Geiszler and Gottlieb, and the simple, satisfying repetition balanced and belied the turmoil of the love growing between them.

There was also the love between the two scientists. It intrigued Lyra. When Dr. Gottlieb told his story, she had not asked, just accepted. Men were not with men, where she came from. Where he and Will came from, perhaps they were. When she asked Will, he said yes, in their world, sometimes men were with men and women were with women. But the naturalist was from where she was from, and she felt sure he was with Dr. Gottlieb. So perhaps it was something in her own world too, of which she did not know. Then she remembered that Geiszler’s dæmon was a male, and that many other Jordan Scholars had mistrusted him for that. She had never questioned why. So this, then, was why?

But Will said he was not certain they were together. Lyra was certain. She hadn’t been quite sure, until this afternoon. They had been hunting for mussels in the low tide, and the naturalist had broken his glasses. He bent over and they fell onto a rock, and when he picked them up, the arm was detached. Dr. Gottlieb took the pieces from him. “Don't worry,” he said.

The four humans had returned to the hut, half-blind Newt holding Dr. Gottlieb’s arm for guidance. Dr. Gottlieb dug through his pack and pulled out a tiny clear tube. A glasses repair kit, he said. He sat at their little table and, putting on his own glasses, set about fixing Newt’s. Lyra had watched. She was strangely fascinated. In the hut all was still except for Hermann’s careful, precise motions. There was something tender about the way he fixed his glasses. Lyra could not have said what. Or maybe it was the way Newt looked at him when he had put them back on and blinked back into the world. But when it was done, she knew they were together.

They spent another day looking for their dæmons, but without success. Lyra wanted to know if they were on the right course, so she consulted the alethiometer.

She found she had some difficulty reading it. In her trance, it took many more repetitions than usual to read what the needle was saying. And when she did, she was not confident she had got all that it was implying. It told her that her friend the witch Serafina Pekkala was coming to escort them home. The journey was long; she would arrive in seven days. The alethiometer was giving Lyra another message too. It involved time and home, but she could not parse it. She sat for too long trying, becoming frustrated, and then the message stopped and she had to give up.

A week. A week for Lyra and Will to find their dæmons, a week before all four humans left the world of the mulefa. Hermann found Newton and Fern hunting mussels in the sandbar. Fern was low to the ground, sniffing them out, and Newt followed, whistling as he dug where his dæmon pointed.

“A week,” Newt repeated when Hermann told him. “Well, all right then. I’m sure the witch has a plan.”

“Do you know her?” Hermann asked.

“No, but I’ve known witches,” Newt said. “Tricky ladies. I like them. They tend to like me too. They’re very strange.”

“That explains it, then,” Hermann said, as Newt went back to digging and whistling.

“Ha, ha,” Newt said, pulling a mussel out.

“What’s that you’re whistling?” Hermann asked in a distant voice.

Newt whistled the tune again. “I think it's Tchaikovsky,” he said. “Why?”

* * *

“Hello?”

Fern sat up. He had been lying across the threshold of their open door. It was evening, after dinner, a few days later. The air was cool and damp. They had lit a fire. The scientists were talking by it now, probably arguing. Fern knew at once that the voice he heard was not of a human but of a dæmon. Lyra, or Will’s?

“Hello,” Fern said, looking round. He didn’t see anyone.

“Fernweh?” said a male voice, sounding greatly surprised.

“Pantalaimon?”

“Fernweh, is that really you?”

“Show yourselves,” said Fern, and two birds fluttered down from the roof.

Pan was in the shape of a tawny owl. The female dæmon, surely Will’s, was a sleek crow. Excited to see Fern, Pan transformed into a fox and bounded forward to meet him. They touched noses.

“It’s a pleasant surprise to see you again,” said Pantalaimon.

“It was always a pleasant surprise to see you, when you showed up to class,” Fern said.

Pan laughed.

“You must be Will’s dæmon,” said Fern to the crow.

“Yes,” she said, bobbing over. She turned into a tabby cat. Her green eyes watched him sharply. There was something willful in them that reminded Fern of Lyra. “My name is Kirjava.”

“Why have you come to us before returning to your humans?” said Fern.

“We have things to tell them,” Pan said. “Important but terrible things.”

“What things?” said Newt’s voice.

All three dæmons looked up. Lit by the fire, the two men looked back at them.

“Come in,” said Fern.

The dæmons came to the hearth and spoke. Newt and Hermann listened.

“Why aren’t you with your humans?” Fern asked.

The dæmons exchanged a look. In it, there was pain and love and solace; what they had to say, they did not want to say.

“We’ve been giving them time,” said Will’s dæmon Kirjava. “Before we tell them.”

“Tell us, then,” said Fern.

Pan started: “After they left us outside the world of the dead, we traveled far and wide. Wherever we found a window, we went through. We saw many strange worlds and learned many strange things.”

Newt reached for his dæmon and scratched his neck. He thought with a pang how strange it was that they could have experiences independent of their humans like that. It was a pang of homesickness, but also of curious envy. What would that be like? They would never know. The finality of that ignorance bothered him, as a scientist.

“Among many things, we learned about Dust. We met an angel.” Here, Hermann stiffened slightly beside Newt. “She told us what we already knew, in a way—the reason the Dust is flowing away.”

“But I thought the Dust current was stopped,” Hermann said. “Just a few days ago. Instead of flowing away, it began falling again.”

“Will and Lyra have repaired some of the flow, but not all,” Pan said. Newt could hear the sorrow in his voice. “The dangerous flood began 300 years ago. We didn’t know why until the angel explained. It’s because of the windows. The Dust is flowing out from the windows between worlds.”

Newt felt a terrible foreboding start to grow in the back of his lungs.

“300 years ago was when the subtle knife was forged. Every time it cuts a window, it makes a slit in the space between worlds, and Dust leaks away into the abyss.”

“Some windows get opened and closed quickly, so they only make a little Dust,” Pan said. “But others are left open. The one you came through, Newt, was a few decades old. The one Dr. Gottlieb came through was more than 200 years old.”

“The abyss is the space between worlds,” Kirjava said. “It’s a nowhere space of nothingness. That's where the Dust disappears to. And that’s where specters come from. They are like spawn of the abyss.”

“Good God,” Hermann murmured.

“That’s why the knife must be destroyed,” she said. “It can never be used again.”

“And all the windows... all the windows must be shut,” said Pan.

Newt felt something closing in him, in his chest. As if one such portal had been open in his chest, and it was being sewn shut.

Hermann, next to him, was blank. Very well, so what if they had to close the windows? They had already decided that Newton was coming to his world. So now, there would be no turning back. So what? For Hermann, there never had been any turning back.

“This is grave news indeed,” Hermann said, his voice surprisingly animated. “Lyra and Will will be upset by the harm they have inadvertently caused. If they wish...” He glanced at Newt, who met his eyes numbly. “...If they wish to stay together, they will have to decide which world.”

Pan made a keening sound. Will’s dæmon was shaking her head, looking deeply pained and a little angry. “No... they can’t.”

“The ghost of Stan Grumman spoke to us,” Pan said quietly. “He came from her world, but lived in mine.” (He meant Kirjava’s.) “For a time... before he became ill. His soul and his body wasted away. He explained to us that... people can only live for a short time outside their world. Only a few years.” Pan closed his eyes. “He made it ten.”

The dæmon spoke the last words so slowly and quietly that they seemed to come from the fire, from the shadows it sent dancing on the floor. Not from reality. Newt stared at the shadows. He was thinking of Stan. Because that was easier. He pictured Stan, his intensity, his wits, his vitality. Could he have been dying all the while? It was impossible. Could Newt live like that? In his mind his possible future became Stan’s definite past. He imagined doing it.

He could do it.

When he looked up, the dæmons had left. Hermann was closing the door. He was still numb. There must be a way. There must. He looked at Newton.

“I’m still coming,” was the first thing Newt said.

“No you are not,” said Hermann instantly.

“I don’t care. About any of it. I don’t care about getting sick. Ten years, Hermann? That’s plenty of time. Ten good years!”

“They would not be ten _good_ years, waiting for you to start dying,” Hermann snapped. “And even so, ten years? That’s nothing! That’s the blink of an eye! We’ll be in our forties, Newton. That’s hardly even middle age. What are you picturing? We have a home together, we’ve built our careers, and then what? You’ll just start—wasting away?” His voice choked for a second as he thought of the men he had known, the gay Americans and Canadians, wasted by AIDS in the prime of their lives. “No,” he said, and his voice cracked again. “No. That would be much worse.”

“But then _what?_ ” Newt said. The cracks in Hermann’s voice were almost enough to make him start crying, and he was fighting not to.

“Then. Then. Then there must be a way around it,” Hermann said. He moved suddenly, pacing from the door to the table, where their tools were laid out neatly for inventory and packing. “We figured out the Dust together. We can find some loophole.”

“A loophole where? How could there be one?” said Newt, his voice rising. “It’s impossible, Hermann, you know it’s impossible. It’s this—my expiration date—or nothing! It would be worth it! This or nothing! I choose this!”

Hermann rounded on him.

“No, it is not this. It’s not this, it will never be this. I will not let you. Not ever. And if it’s not this, it’s nothing. It’s nothing, Newton.”

He suddenly started to cry, and his face crumpled in the most horrible way Newt could imagine. But before Newt could start towards him, Hermann’s hand shot out and he struck the table. The noise snapped the silence with a hysterical crack. He whipped around and found the binoculars on the table. He snatched them from the table and hurled them to the floor. The glass shattered. The violence of his movement shocked Newt so badly that he didn’t cry yet. Hermann leaned on the table, back to Newt, shaking.

“After all this—” he said, voice choked, “After more than thirty years—you bring us together—and after all we went through to get here—you bring us together from different worlds—and you let this happen?—You bring us together, just to _use us_ —for some holy mission—and then when it’s done, that’s it? You let us be torn apart? That’s it?”

Hermann struck the table again, but already more weakly. Newt was crying silently. He knew who Hermann was talking to, for the first time in ten years.

And he knew if hearts could break, he was seeing Hermann’s breaking now. Newt was crushed, but it had never seemed real. It had always been, at bottom, too good to be true. But not for Hermann. Newt knew Hermann had allowed himself to believe it. For the first time, Hermann had moved happiness from the realm of fantasy into reality. Now it was torn away.

So fate had dictated.


	8. Cornerstone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter here we go! Thanks for waiting. I love you.

He woke in a cold house. It took some blank staring at the white ceiling before he was able to get up. Hermann made his slow way down to the kitchen, turned the coffee on, put his toast in the toaster. He went into the bathroom while one machine dripped and one ticked.

It was a Monday in late March. He took a hot shower, brushed his teeth, shaved, stretched, dressed. It was 5:25 when he sat down to eat. Toast was the most he could stomach for breakfast these days. Hermann sat at his small table by his kitchen window, looking at his frozen little back garden. His coffee was warm between his cold hands. He kept his house cold; he had always preferred it that way. It was solitary; he had always preferred that as well. His house was small, almost too cramped to be called cozy. This too, he had always preferred. Sometimes he missed the infinite openness of the prairie. But there was security in confinement.

Everything in his home was as it had been before: orderly. He did not think about how it might have been, with someone else, someone less orderly, living in it. His eyes did not linger on the places another person had briefly occupied, as fleeting as a firefly and just as fickle.

In truth—they did not. Hermann kept his memories from his voyage beneath a lid and he kept his souvenirs in the hall closet. The notebook, the seed, the gyroscope, other fragments. It was not that he pushed the memories back down when they rose; if one rose, he looked at it. But mostly, the memories stayed obligingly where he left them.

Provided Darwin cooperated. Which was not a given.

He finished getting dressed: sweater vest, blazer, shoes, glasses. He checked his messages. It seemed he had missed a call from his sister Karla. She had left a message on his answering machine, which he listened to while packing exams into his bag. She was asking him to come visit, again. She asked every time they spoke on the phone, which these days was fairly often. But when she asked, he always said it was not yet a good time. Maybe in a month or two.

* * *

They stand on the prairie, at the edge of the world. Before them is the door from mulefa’s world into Lyra and Newt’s. A goodbye delegation is seeing them off: Lyra and Pan, Will and Kirjava, Newt and Fern, the witch Serafina Pekkala, and Hermann. Serafina arrived a day ago. Newt likes her. Hermann has been surprisingly cold towards her, but Newt knows he’s just upset. He hopes Hermann isn’t going to be like that with everyone on this journey home. He holds out hope that there are still periods of happiness in their abridged future together.

Atal is saying a fond goodbye to the kids, touching Lyra’s forehead gently with her trunk. Lyra is crying a little. She’s only known Atal for two weeks, but she is a child of great love.

The zalif moves from Lyra to Newt in a slow roll.

 _Newt,_ she says.

 _Atal,_ he says.

_Where is Hermann? Tell him to come close. We have gifts._

_Oh, Atal,_ Newt says. _You’re too good to us._

_Too good? Impossible._

Newt glances around and finds Hermann, who is off fussing with the packs to avoid talking to others. “Hermann!” The physicist’s head jerks up. “Get over here.”

 _Gifts, to thank you,_ Atal says once Hermann has joined them. She gives a small fabric sack to Hermann, and one of equal size but greater weight to Newt.

 _It is us who should thank you,_ says Hermann, while Newt begins immediately untying his. _You have given us a great gift of time and knowledge. Knowledge of you and your world and your ways. Nothing could be a better gift._

 _But you have given us the same gift,_ Atal says. _It is a great privilege to know you. So perhaps consider these not gifts, but reminiscences._

Hermann puts his hand on Atal’s trunk gently. He feels as if his heart is so heavy that his entire body is going to collapse round it and form a black hole. He has been so happy here, in her beautiful world. Will he ever be happy again outside it?

_I... We will never forget you._

“Wow,” Newt says. He’s emptied the contents of the bag into his palm: it’s a sack of seeds, all different shapes and sizes. At the bottom, there is an enormous one. A wheel-pod seed. _Atal, this is a great gift. Thank you._

 _Newt, we know this is your area of knowledge, and we regret you cannot take your collection of plants. I will tend to them now that you have gone, as long as they live or as long as I am able. But these seeds, perhaps, will grow in your home. It will be an experiment_. _Hermann, I hope your wheel-pod seed will grow as well._

_I do too._

* * *

Hermann arrived in his office at 7 sharp, where he sat grading exams with the door shut until his 9 AM class. If he was good at one part of teaching, it was quick grade turnover. He scheduled his time with severity: on Thursday his forty students sat the exam. Each took twenty minutes to grade, making thirteen hours and twenty minutes of work. He did two hours Thursday night, three hours Friday night, three hours and twenty minutes on Saturday, three hours Sunday, and two hours Monday morning (this morning). He liked the repetition and the thorny thickets of convoluted “show your work.” But on balance, Hermann was not a good teacher. When he graded, there was a clear difference between the tutorial groups. It was obvious which of the graduate students were carrying his weight.

Dr. Gottlieb had been teaching here since the beginning of term in January. It was a small college far from his house, and though he did not like the work, he needed the work. He needed _to_ work.

“It’s not work,” Darwin said. “It’s _busy_ work.”

 _Busywork_ is _work,_ Hermann thought, but did not say.

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” she said.

He continued to ignore her.

It was surprising, and initially suspicious, how little trouble he and Will had fitting back into their world. Not many inquiries had been made after them. Whatever surveillance Hermann had been under had vanished; whatever manhunt Will had been the target of had ended. After some paranoid inquiries, they had learned that Sir Charles had gone mysteriously missing. That had attracted a lot more attention; but there were no leads, and all the strings he had been pulling to reel them in had fallen slack in his absence.

Will allowed Hermann to help him with his mother. He was the first adult Will had ever confided in. But his worst fears did not come true: she was not taken away. With a diagnosis and the beginning of treatment, she was allowed to stay with her son.

Hermann helped them sell their house and find a small flat close to his. He visited several times a week. Hermann thought (and Darwin agreed) that there was a lot he would have neglected if not for Will. Taking care of them, or rather, helping them to take care of themselves, kept him on top of taking care of himself. Relatively speaking. He often thought that he would have uprooted completely and moved back to Germany, or far away to Patagonia; or maybe he would have gone nowhere and done nothing, and wasted away in his house until the weeds overgrew and the paint chipped away and the dust choked him.

“You’re so dramatic,” Darwin said in German. Hermann said nothing.

Not for the first time, he tried to picture the life that could have been. Would Newton have become a researcher, or would it have been impossible? Would they have been happy living together, or would they have grown apart outside their first strange circumstance?

What was Newton doing now?

He found all these answers impossible to even speculate upon. His mind simply would not weigh any options. It stopped dead, as though Newton and the mulefa had never existed. When he tried, with miserable self-indulgence, to picture how the naturalist lived now, in his world, even that was impossible. No scenario presented itself. His mind was stuck like a record on his last image of the man, vanishing in the leafy, glass-lit dawn.

He shouldered his bag and went to the lecture hall for his 9 AM class.

* * *

Hermann is standing away from the sledge, looking over the ridge at the mountain range. The air is brisk. The light has that drained prismatic quality of the end of a late fall afternoon, when the sun does not so much set as vanish colorlessly. Newt crunches up behind him, absolutely un-stealthy.

Their hired driver is reorganizing some weight in the sledge. Will and Lyra are talking quietly while Serafina keeps watch. It is the third day of their journey south across the tundra. Hermann is looking east, watching the watery sunlight on the west-facing side of the mountains, watching it fade like a water stain drying away. The mountains remind him of home, a little. He feels an attempt at nostalgia in his stomach, but it is halfhearted. They are familiar, is all. That does not mean he missed them, or will miss them. But he thinks he did perhaps miss the cold. It is a bracing anaesthetic; he has been warm for too long.

He hears Newton, but does not turn. Newton’s footsteps stop next to him, a little below on the slope. It is another three days’ journey to the port town where Serafina says they will meet the gyptians. They will then take a ship southwards.

Newton's clouds of breath are encroaching upon his frame of vision. Hermann watches the mountains.

“You going to start talking anytime soon?” Newt says at last.

All he can see is Hermann's hood and the regular breaths venting from it.

“I have been speaking,” Hermann says without looking at him. “We are speaking right now.”

“You know what I mean,” Newt says to his hood.

“I'm afraid I don't.”

Newt can't tell if this is a genuine deflection or flirtatious pugnacity. He tests theory number one by presenting genuine advice.

“You should talk to Serafina. You should take her up on her offer. I think it would be good for you—especially after we—”

Hermann doesn't let him finish that thought. He clears his throat loudly and says, “Is Mackenzie finished with the sledge?”

“No,” Newt says, frowning. “No, you ass. You never listen. Ever notice that? It's not good for you. Other people know things that you don't. Someone is going to have to give you a hard time about it. It won't always be me, but it will be for the next two weeks.”

Again, Hermann says nothing. Every hour that passes, Newt gets more scared Hermann won’t wake up, and that the man he finally says goodbye to will just stare back with those dead eyes of defeat.

“I honestly don’t see the point.”

“The point?” says Newt. “How could you not get the point of learning to see your dæmon? Dæmons are great. You have a companion all the time, someone who understands you completely because they _are_ you. Someone to love that you never have to worry about. Let Serafina teach you how to see them.”

“I have never needed one.”

“You don’t have to need something. You can just want it.”

Finally he turns. His eyes don't look terribly dead. But he also doesn't say anything.

“That is rarely enough,” Hermann says.

“No harm in trying anyway,” Newt says, before Hermann can drag the conversation somewhere melancholy. He searches Hermann’s eyes for something, anything. “Hey. Has anyone told you that you look adorable in a parka?”

Hermann actually flushes at that, and Newt laughs. He pats Hermann's frozen cheek with a massive mitten.

“Keep up, Dr. Decorum,” he says. “Your witty repartee game is way off. You're letting me score all the easy points.”

“You're ridiculous,” Hermann says.

“Will you talk to her?”

His eyes slide past Newt and fix over his shoulder in the direction of the sledge. Without another word he walks slowly back. Newt watches him go. So maybe he won’t snap out of it; but this is something.

* * *

The sea is ice and iron and as still as an active volcano. It bubbles and churns day and night. Hermann does not have the stomach for it. Though the wind is unforgiving, he stands on the deck through the day, eyes fixed on the horizon, willing himself not to be sick. It works. But it is tedious. The sea is winter gray and the air is cold, cold, cold. Sometimes Hermann imagines he is staving off the future the same way he is staving off his sickness; but it is just as illusory. As soon as he goes back below, he will be ill again.

They are navigating from deserted places into progressively more populous areas. His lack of dæmon is going to be noticed in warmer climates, where there are no parkas to conceal the presumed but nonexistent. In this world he is an aberration; in this world he stares at the horizon for hours instead of taking a simple Dramamine.

Newton materializes beside him.

“Am I interrupting?” he says with faux solicitude.

Hermann glances at him, but says nothing.

“You are the undisputed king of melancholic horizon-staring,” Newt says, following his gaze across the featureless seascape. “I'm minting you a medal.”

“This is not melancholic. It's medical,” Hermann snaps.

“Is it?” says Newt. “You’ve been moaning in my bunk for the past three days. I assumed that was melancholia-related. Now you're telling me you're _physically_ sick? My God, it isn’t catching, is it? Am I infected too?”

Hermann is trying to hide his smile with limited success.

“If it is, you're far too late.”

“You’re telling me!” Newt says with loud fake indignance. “If I had known, I would have kicked you out! Instead of _comforting_ you, by—”

Hermann clears his throat loudly as a crewman walks past.

Newt snickers.

“You are an atrocious man,” Hermann says.

“He would have loved it,” Newt says, winking at the crewman’s receding back. “Sailors love saucy gossip. Everyone knows that. How are the dæmon lessons going?”

“Poorly,” Hermann says, turning back to the sea.

“Why?” Fern asks.

“Because he's stubborn,” Newt says, leaning his shoulder against Hermann's.

“Because it is difficult,” Hermann says. “It is like the trance of the Cave or the I Ching, but less focused. More expansive. More self-directed.”

“How can it be all of those?”

“How indeed,” says Hermann grumpily. “That’s the problem.”

“Have you made any progress?” Fern asks hopefully. He has told Hermann about the wings he saw. He is intensely curious to see the dæmon, even perhaps speak to them.

“I haven’t managed to see anything. But sometimes I believe I almost hear something. I hear a... voice. It is muffled and distant. Like someone left the BBC on in the other room.”

“Hmm,” says Fern with interest, while Newt asks, “What's a BBC?”

Their sea journey takes a week. At night in their shared berth, in the churning belly of the sea, Newt does his best to keep Hermann warm and occupied. He knows he is keeping himself distracted as well. Hermann lies with his head tucked under Newt's chin, hand roaming across Newt's bare chest with slow intent. His palm finds its spot at the top of Newt's chest; there is a bump at the top of his sternum, below his collarbone. Hermann likes to press the indent of his palm to this bump. It fits perfectly.

“There you are,” Newt murmurs.

“Hm?”

“You,” says Newt.

“I have been here for some time.”

Newt can't see his face but his voice sounds warm, less unhappy than lately.

“All right, so, bear with me,” Newt says. “Dust.”

“Yes.”

“Consciousness.”

“I'm with you so far.”

“When we measure it on people it's everywhere. Not just their head, where their mind is. Dust is all over us. Consciousness is all through us. In every part of the body.”

Hermann says nothing, but presses his hand a little tighter.

“So this,” Newt says, gently lifting Hermann's hand off his chest and threading his fingers through Hermann's, “Is you.”

“I'm not sure I agree,” Hermann says as they watch their hands move slowly together.

“How could you possibly disagree?” Newt says. “You looked through the electrum glass. You literally saw the Dust yourself. It was all over. Are you going to ruin my poetic pillow talk with a metaphysical dispute? Oh my god, of course you are.”

“I would not be interested in your metaphysical pillow talk if it precluded civil disagreement,” Hermann says, “And I doubt you would either.”

“That's fair,” Newt says. “Except for your claim that your disagreement is ‘civil.’ I know how little it takes to get you uncivil.”

This earns him a swat. Hermann rolls over, hiked up on his elbow, and looks down at Newt. Newt's heart sinks at the look on his face. He looks sad and distracted—like he's trying not to be, but failing. Newt's banter hasn't helped.

“Sorry,” Newt says.

“For what?”

“I don't know,” says Newt. “Oh no, I'm ruining the mood now, aren't I?”

Hermann frowns.

“Do you love me?” Newt says.

“You know I do,” Hermann says, with an immediacy that eliminates irony.

“Am I helping?” Newt asks helplessly.

Hermann kisses him.

“You make everything more difficult,” Hermann murmurs. “Without exception.”

He's so close Newt can see all the details of his face without his glasses on. He slides his hand up into Hermann’s hair and strokes it fondly before pulling him back down.

By the end of the trip, Hermann is sick with a cold. Sunset finds Newt on the deck alone.

“Trying to catch the same cold?” says Lyra's voice. He turns, smiles hello. She is bundled tight, with Pan's auburn marten fur showing inside her hood where he is nestled like a scarf.

“If he's got it, my days are numbered,” says Newt.

Lyra gives a small laugh.

She and Pan come to stand beside him and Fern at the railing. They are on the same impassable side of the same impassable chasm. There is little to say about it.

The four watch the sunset.

“It's strange,” Newt says at last. He knows Lyra won't understand what he's talking about. But he wants to say it to her rather than just to Fern. “Ever since we found out... Hermann's been so helpless. It's upsetting, really. I feel like he’s drifting, I don’t know where, and I don’t know how to pull him back. It's why I keep pressing the dæmon issue. He needs _someone_ to talk to, you know? We all do.

“Hermann is the caretaker. He always has been for me, and, from what I can gather, he has been his whole life. But these days he's in such a hopeless state it feels like _I'm_ taking care of _him_. I’ve only ever had myself to take care of. I don’t really know how.” He frowned at the horizon. “And I'm not sure I like it.”

Lyra looked at him, but having nothing to say, only nodded.

“But I guess there's a lot of unpleasant things we haven't had time to learn about each other. So now I know that Hermann doesn't take bad news so well. Or change of any kind. I suppose I knew that—but I didn’t know how badly. And to be sure, there's unpleasant things about me he hasn't had time to learn—I mean, God knows I have plenty.

“Or maybe this is a change in Hermann. Maybe he's never been like this before. I've never had to accommodate any kind of change in a person like that. I've never been that close to anyone for that long. So I never had to. I’ve never had to learn about these kinds of gritty, unappealing compromises.” He finds suddenly that he is crying. “Now we never will.”

* * *

Dr. Gottlieb's 2 PM class was no better than his 9 AM. For someone so good at abstract problems, he was not good at imagining all the ways others could misunderstand them. Hermann saw problems only the way he solved them, and so could only explain them the way he himself understood. When this explanation did not enlighten half his students, he did not have the right creativity to see what might be more enlightening.

This inability was one of the few things Darwin did not nag him about. There was very little his dæmon left unsaid. She told Hermann every day to call his sister, to plant his wheel-pod tree, to look for a new job, and for God's sake, to stop ignoring her.

She told him several times per hour.

She never shut up.

Since he had finally learned to see her, Hermann’s dæmon had not stopped talking. She vocalized every unwanted thought in the ‘should’ sector of his brain, embodied them, shot them at him in a stream of modulated English and German irritation.

Only Hermann could hear or see her. He felt like an insane person.

“I have a lot stored up,” she would say, “Since you spent the last thirty-five years ignoring me.”

Darwin had named herself. When Newton had told him what his mother almost named Fern, she had taken that name for herself. “It was obvious you weren’t going to give me one,” she had said. “Even if you ever did start listening. Remember when you listened for a day or two? We talked? It was nice, wasn’t it? But you’re a terrible listener. Has anyone ever told you that?”

Since their return to their world, Hermann had steadfastly refused to speak to her. She talked all day in her smooth, angry voice, and he did not say a thing back.

He refused to change a thing. Yet things changed. Darwin was here now, and she had a voice that he could not ignore.

“Professor, I don’t understand this question,” said one student in the front row. “Can you walk us through it?”

“It’s not that hard,” Darwin said haughtily, from the chair where she was perched. “Were you paying attention?”

“Certainly,” said Professor Gottlieb in a clipped voice. He turned to the chalkboard and walked them through it. When he was done, the student’s frown was only deeper.

He returned to his office to find the missed call light blinking. He dialed to return the call and waited while it connected. He looked out the window, where an unconvincing flurry was falling. Probably the last of the winter. On Sunday, without planning, he had taken the train to Portsmouth. He didn’t know why he’d gone. He hadn’t done anything there; he had just looked at the sea. He’d wanted to see the open horizon again. The sea had been dead winter gray and the air had been cold, cold, cold.

The horizon had been as empty as ever. No imaginary Newton had materialized to watch the view beside him. No imaginary Newton appeared to him now, hinting at what the real one might be up to. Only the last gasp of his reality, burned onto Hermann's optical cortex like a bad dream—a tear-stained face smiling as the green fabric of space sealed up between them.

A tinny voice snapped him out of his reverie.

“Hello?”

“Hello, this is Dr. Hermann Gottlieb, returning your call. To whom am I speaking, please?”

“Hermann!” said a warm American voice. “It’s Ritchie. How have you been?”

Hermann had worked with Dr. Richard Brand during his doctorate. Ritchie was an astrophysicist, and if memory served, now worked for the BNSC. He was extremely personable and somewhat oblivious, which made it impossible not to be on first-name terms with him. Hermann was glad to know him, in small doses.

“Oh, hello Ritch. Good to hear from you.”

“Listen, listen, is this a good time to talk?” Without waiting for an answer, he plunged on. “It’s not a great time for me, so I’ll have to be quick. Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine at the ESA. Philipe. Great guy. New satellite project brewing there, an X-Ray survey. Space observatory, actually, rather. They're calling it the _Cornerstone 2_ mission.”

The ESA was the European Space Agency. “Didn’t _Cornerstone 1_ fail?” said Hermann, who followed these things closely.

“Oh, yes, last year. No liftoff. But they’re rebuilding, Hermann, and the replacement mission is looking excellent. Anyway, Philipe told me he was looking for some math on his space observatory. It sounded right up your alley. He gave me the overview—and asked did I know anyone? I sure do, I said! I told him about your dark matter project, and he was very intrigued. Can’t go wrong with Hermann, I told him. No one better. The man’s a stone cold calculator. I gave him your number. Let me give you his.”

Hermann obediently took the number down and thanked Ritch. The astrophysicist was pressed for time and had to ring off—to Hermann’s relief—but not before he exhorted Hermann in no uncertain terms to call that number.

There was no doubt what would happen once he hung up. In fact, it happened before he hung up. As soon as he had the thought, Darwin said, “You bet, buddy.”

Hermann put the phone down slowly.

“You’ve got to call Philipe,” said Darwin. “Right now. Call him. Oh my god. You’re not calling. You’re not serious, are you? Oh my god. You’re serious.”

Hermann exhaled slowly. Certainly, it sounded interesting. But there was nothing wrong with his life now...

“Are you kidding me?”

He folded the paper with the number on it.

“Good god...” Darwin said in exasperated German.

Hermann cleared his throat and put the paper in his pocket. He was nothing if not committed.

“I’m not going to ask you to stop ignoring me,” Darwin said, “Because, well, you know my thoughts on that. You can’t ignore me forever.”

 _Yes I can,_ Hermann thought. _I’m getting better and better at it._

“You’re getting worse at it,” Darwin shot back. “I saw your face today when I backtalked your student. You almost smiled. I will wear you down, Hermann.”

* * *

Hermann is distracted when it finally happens. He is standing alone on a dock in the fens. They are waiting to switch boats. It is their eighth day with the gyptians, who met them at the port with their slow but mercifully steady riverboats. When they reach Oxford, Will will make the last cut with the knife and he and Hermann will return to their world. Then they will destroy the knife.

According to Serafina this, any moment of quiet, is an opportunity to practice. She is a rather harsh teacher, and Hermann often thinks that she would be more patient with a female pupil. She constantly describes to him, imperiously and obliquely, a state of perfect detached focus. But her repeated explanations are still vague, and he is starting to doubt that this state exists.

Not terribly committed to making the most of this practice opportunity, Hermann stares out over the twilit water. It is all hills and hummocks of bobbing waves, susurrating fields of grasses and cattails. His focus slips from the fore as his eyes follow a bright yellow butterfly, strange and luminous in the dusk. The voice slips in between the wind like a familiar voice from childhood, crisp and neutral and shaped just right. _Hermann... Hello...?_

“Hermann?”

He turns slowly. His stomach undulates like the waves around him. The sound is so familiar but the feeling so strange and distant. He feels the importance of what he will see—as soon as he turns, his life will never be the same.

“Hermann? Hello? Hello?”

She is perched on the rotting pylon. His dæmon is a bat hawk. He knows this right away, though if you had asked him the day before, he would not have known what a bat hawk looked like. But there she is, and everything she knows, he knows. Her head is sleek and triangular, her feathers as dark as the wood of her post, and her huge harsh eyes are so yellow they seem to glow in the dusk.

“Oh,” he says, feeling simultaneously overwhelmed and inexplicably comforted, “Hello. Do you have a name?”

“Hello? Can you hear me?” she says. Her voice is neutral, like a reporter, like the voice of his own thoughts. “What? Of course I have a name. I’ve been trying to talk to you all this time. Hermann?”

Hermann stares at her, speechless.

She is shocked too, just as shocked as he. “Can you really hear me?”

* * *

They reach Oxford a few days later. They thank the gyptians and the witch and part ways. It is necessary to find a common space they know is shared between the two worlds. The teenagers request the Oxford botanical gardens and it sounds like they have discussed it prior. Hermann and Newt agree.

Will makes the cut. He shudders, knowing one last specter will be created. The window opens onto a secluded space behind some shrubs, and the four stand before it in the late morning sunlight.

“One day, and one night, as arranged,” Hermann says, looking at the two teenagers. “We meet back here tomorrow.”

Lyra nods. Will only stares at him.

“See you then.”

The teenagers disappear back into the green. One day and night in Lyra’s Oxford. One day and night for the scientists in Hermann’s Oxford.

Fern stirs uncomfortably. A field trip into this world means that he has to wear a leash and pretend to be a regular dog. Fortunately Darwin, as the bat hawk dæmon named herself, is invisible to others in that world. Fern senses Newt’s fear and excitement. Darwin, perched on a branch, shuffles and fixes her wings.

Newt looks sideways at Hermann, who is looking at the little window. All they can see is green leaves. But the light through them is harsher somehow. For Newt it sparks magnetic curiosity.

Newt can’t wait and Hermann won’t catch his eye—so he steps through.

Hermann stays a moment longer. This is the last time he will breathe the air of another world. But his thoughts are mostly on the next twenty-four hours. What will they do? What can he show Newton? Everything? Nothing?

Possibilities flutter through his mind. He sees them walking in the park, visiting the museums, the sights, cafés—no, Newton would want to see the exotically ordinary, he would want to see the grocery store, the cinema, the bus. Does Hermann even have a car anymore? Has it been towed? And what state is his house in? Who has missed him? Will the police be there?

“Come now,” Darwin says softly.

He looks at her.

“Hermann?” comes Newton’s voice from the other side. “You coming?”

“Yes,” Hermann says distantly.

Newt’s hand appears, reaching back through.

Hermann takes it and crosses home. Darwin follows a second later.

“What are we going to do?” Newton asks.

Newton is looking around, beaming, nearly bouncing. His big green eyes are full of light. Suddenly, in the familiar late morning sun of England, his excitement infects Hermann.

“There’s so much,” Newton is saying. “Too much to do. We have to choose carefully.”

“Yes,” says Hermann, nodding. He takes Newton’s hand and tugs it. “Yes we do.”

They rent _Jurassic Park_.

* * *

Hermann pressed the buzzer. He had a key, but he did not dream of presuming in such a way.

Darwin was perching on the railing behind him. He knew she wanted to perch on his shoulder, but she never tried. She never touched him, in fact. He wondered if she weighed anything. Was she real?

“I’m real, you ass,” she said.

Hermann shifted, leaning more on his cane.

“Wooden cane today, huh?” she said. “The one thing you didn’t lock up. Is it more comfortable? You should get a rubber tip for the bottom. Don’t want it splitting.”

He shifted again, looking at the door. Where was Will? Darwin was actually probably right about the cane.

“Of course I’m right.” She shuffled and opened her wings, then refolded them. “You’ve got to stop disagreeing with me on principle as though I’m Newton. And you need to stop being mad at me because I’m not Newton. I’m not him. I’m you.”

He stabbed the buzzer a second time with uncharacteristic heat. Her words filled him with miserable ire. He was angry—but it was pathetic, and he was angry at himself for being so pathetic. What was the point? Of any of it? Who was he trying to make the point _to_?

The door opened and Will’s face appeared.

“Hermann,” he said with what passed for a smile on his sturdy face. “Sorry. Come on in.”

“Hello, William,” he said. He stepped inside. “I trust you're well.”

“Hi, Darwin,” Will said as the hawk fluttered in after him. “What’s the word?”

“Hey, Will. Big news, actually,” Darwin said, eyeing her human. “I’ll let Hermann tell you at dinner.”

In this world, only Will and Kirjava could see or hear Darwin. They knew Hermann tended to ignore her. It was a relief to be around others who could share the burden, the burden of her stream of opinions that were really his opinions.

They ate at the Parrys’ every Monday, and the Parrys ate at their house every Thursday. Sitting at their small kitchen table overlooking the front walk, Will told Hermann about school. Kirjava lounged on the windowsill. Darwin perched on the top crossbar of the empty fourth chair. As usual, Elaine did not say much to Hermann. But when Will spoke, she listened intently.

“What’s your big news, then?” Will asked him after a while.

Hermann threw a glance at Darwin, who twitched in surprise at this acknowledgment of her existence. He knew if he didn’t say it, she would.

“I am a person of interest for a new project,” Hermann said delicately. “A satellite project.”

“A new job?” Will said. “Hermann, that’s great. I know how much you hate this one. That sounds really exciting.”

“It is not an offer, only a possibility,” Hermann said. “And to be clear, William, I do not hate my teaching job.”

“He hates it,” said Darwin confidingly.

“I know you hate it,” Will said. “You’ve got to call the satellite project. It would be so much cooler.”

“He doesn’t want to call,” said Darwin, when Hermann said nothing. “He doesn’t want a job he likes. He wants to wallow.”

Hermann’s jaw clenched. So this was her revenge. If he would not hear his inmost thoughts from her, others would hear them instead.

“But you’ve got to call!”

“And he still won’t visit his sister,” Darwin added.

“Go see your sister!” Will said.

“And plant the tree!”

“I cannot plant the _tree_ ,” Hermann snapped venomously. “It’s _winter_! The ground is _frozen_! Now for God’s sake, stop asking me!”

“Oh my god!” said Darwin. “You spoke to me!”

* * *

“No, I’m telling you, you have to keep it. It’s yours. End of conversation.”

The four are standing in the greenhouse on Will and Hermann’s side of the window. Newt has pressed the notebook of mulefa data into Hermann’s hands and will not let him give it back. This uncharacteristic insistence strikes Hermann as suspicious, or at the least motivated by something unstated.

He just takes it. He is in turmoil inside, neither the past nor the future mean anything; only the indecipherable gestures of the man he knows best mean anything, and soon he will have nothing more than a back catalog of memories to decipher in circles as they fade.

He takes the book. “Fine.”

Lyra and Will are talking quietly a few yards away. Lyra glances at Newt but he holds up a finger. Another minute.

“So this is it,” says Newt meaninglessly. He is past panic about his shell-shocked partner—Hermann has Darwin now, he has someone, himself, at least. Newt wishes he could trust that to be enough.

Hermann nods.

“You prepared a speech, didn’t you?” Newt says, smiling, searching Hermann’s eyes.

“A what?” says Hermann. “No. Did you expect me to?”

“I just thought you might,” says Newt, winking, his heart sinking a little. “Seemed like the kind of thing you’d do.”

Hermann shakes his head. He feels too choked to speak, and too desperate to say anything coherent if he did.

“You okay?”

“Just worried,” Hermann says. Which is always true.

“Don’t be,” says Newton softly.

Hermann closes his eyes against tears. He nods.

“You won’t be alone anymore,” Newt says, putting his hand on Hermann’s cheek. “And neither will I.”

Hermann nods again. “I know. You’re never alone.”

“That’s not what I mean,” says Newt from the darkness. “I’ll never be alone again, because you’ll always be with me.”

* * *

Hermann was on the train to Switzerland. Karla lived outside Zürich with her husband and two children. It was only a few days, but perhaps it would be nice.

The train car was mostly empty. Those in it, though, would have noticed him talking to nobody, so he said nothing to Darwin. Since he had started speaking to her, she had become quieter. In his lap, he held the notebook. He had got it out of storage and brought it on the trip. He was going to tell Karla. She wouldn’t believe him. Who would? His story was the talk of a madman.

He stared out the window at the passing valley. It was April, late afternoon. The green was blooming on the grass and soon the trees would bud. The final rays of light cut through the mountains, carving spring's first rays into the earth. The light of the mulefa world came back to him. So warm and fully colored, slicing through the massive trees and falling into ribbons on their roots. Without a warning, claws of longing clutched him. He wished so suddenly, intensely to be back there that it ached, right in the sternum.

Summertime. Summer had that light. Was it always summer in the world of the mulefa? He had never found out. But this world had summer. With sudden urgency he looked forward to the summer, to the return of that warm, full light.

Hermann opened the notebook for the first time since his return home. He flipped slowly through his first dictionary entries, his list of resources and uses, his proposed designs for the rope and climbing system, crossed out and annotated by Newton. Newton’s spike boot drawing, crossed out by him. The ache in his chest was only getting worse. A mockup of the binoculars. Pages and pages of Dust data from the gyroscope. Newton’s plant anatomy sketches.

There were a few blank pages, and he thought he had reached the end, and was about to go back to read thoroughly from the beginning, when he saw it. There was writing on the later pages.

Suddenly Hermann remembered Newton’s secretive notes in the back of their notebook. Newton had told him not to read them, and he had forgotten them completely. But here they were.

They were upside down. Heart thumping, Hermann flipped the notebook over and upside down. The entries began on the last page.

_Day 33_

_Sunset_

_Dear Hermann,_

_It's week two of our platform study. We’ve just had dinner, and you’re screwing uselessly with the gyroscope in the front yard while I write. You just asked me what I was writing and I told you it was none of your business. In reality, it is very much your business, maybe only your business. But not yet._

_Here is my plan. I aim to keep an operational log of our multi-longitudinal study, both anthropological and dust-ological (this is now a word). So far, our log has been only numerical. I know that’s your thing (numbers). In general, the empirical data is my thing as well. But I think you’ll find an operational log more useful in the long term, for personal reasons. Okay, maybe a better way to put it: consider this a gift. Alternatively, if you hate it, because you seem to hate my discursive style, consider it a thoughtful prank. Because I know you’ll read it anyway._

Pages and pages of entries followed. He had written to Hermann every day for almost two months. Wiping his eyes, Hermann flipped to the last one. Then he flipped back to the beginning, at the end. He checked the time—he had time to read them all before they reached their destination.

With a shush of feathers, Darwin hopped onto his shoulder to read along with him. They both tensed. It was the first time they had ever touched.

As he read, he understood as clearly as if she had been saying it for weeks and he had been ignoring her. As sunlight slowly turning on a hardwood floor. Hermann had returned home and refused to change anything—as a way to hang before to the past—to the person he was then. But the person he was hanging onto was the person he was before his journey. He had changed.

He had changed because of what he had seen, and because Newton had changed him. He was a different man for having met him. They would have gone on changing each other, and changing together, perhaps; but they had made a start.

* * *

Hermann had never asked what Newton’s plans were afterwards, and Newton never volunteered. He did not want to become attached to an imaginary life for Newton that would become outdated in a few years. For Hermann knew the naturalist would roam and that he himself would stay still, clinging to whatever fading details he was left with. So he asked for nothing. If Lyra’s land of the dead was real, he would find out the truth one day, either from the harpies or from the ghost of Newton himself. He comforted himself with that awaiting finality.

In truth, Newt and Fern did roam far and wide. Within the year, they left Europe for an exciting new research expedition in California. Lyra enrolled in a girls’ school to prepare for her lifelong study of the alethiometer. She received monthly letters from Newt, filled with descriptions of the terrifically grotesque La Brea tar pits and the terrifically bizarre things he was pulling out of them.

Before he left, Lyra took him back to the greenhouse in the botanical gardens. She told him about her and Will’s plan—to “meet” there every summer solstice, in their respective universes, and sit together. He liked the idea. He wished Hermann had been the type to make that sort of plan, because Newt certainly wasn’t. Then he thought perhaps Hermann was the type, and that he just had not been in the state to make it. He had been in a state of extreme, self-imposed future-blindness. And past-blindness. A state of present-panic.

Newt and Lyra found an unoccupied spot in the greenhouse and planted the wheel-pod seed. They marked it with a square of stakes and string, knowing no one would disturb or question it once it started growing. They liked the idea of it growing up to improbable sizes right under the noses of the experts, one day bursting through the glass ceiling, none of them knowing what it was or where it came from. For years, Lyra visited it to watch its slow growth.

Because in smaller ways, Newt was the type to plan for the future—in sentimental, symbolic ways that were for him alone to carry, like the career and interpersonal peripatetic that he was. For instance, unbeknownst to Hermann, he had saved a piece of the broken amber binoculars. He wore it on a chain around his neck. It rested near his collarbone and he fiddled with it frequently. Sometimes, but not often, lying alone, Newt fitted his palm over the bump on his sternum, as if it too was a talisman Hermann had left him. But he did not do so often.

Despite Hermann’s best efforts, Newt’s broken arm had not quite set right. It never healed properly. When people asked about its odd bent, Newt would tell them that it had been broken by his true love in God’s comedy of errors.

* * *

By the time Hermann returned from Zürich, the thaw had begun in earnest. On his first free day he took a shovel, went to the back garden, and planted the wheel-pod seed. Digging was hard for him, and it was raining. Darwin fluttered from perch to perch, shaking the water off her feathers. Neither of them minded the rain. And the physical labor, however brief, did Hermann good.

They sat quiet in his kitchen afterwards, drying off and watching the rain fall in the back garden.

“We can't ever move house now, can we?” Darwin said.

“I suppose not,” Hermann said with a frown. “But that’s all right.”

He had interviewed and been offered the job on the x-ray satellite, and he was going to take it. After that, who knew? Newton would probably settle down somewhere new. Perhaps he was on the move right now.

Since his trip, since reading the logs, something had been dislodged from the dam. Hermann was no longer incapable of picturing Newton in new places. He pictured him ice climbing, Fern harnessed to his back. He pictured him digging up dinosaurs in the salt flats of Utah, far at last from the reach of the Church. He pictured him deep in the sea in a dangerous diving bell, searching the ocean floor for the grotesque and fantastical, eager and invincible as ever. He pictured him sitting quietly in the Oxford greenhouse with Lyra.

He often thought of a conversation he and Newton had had on their last night together. They had been lying in Hermann’s bed at home. Something about separation; about the border between their worlds, which physical properties Newton never tired of speculating upon and questioning his physicist about. He argued that, since the worlds had the same physical laws, they must be contained in the same envelope in some higher dimension.

Usually Hermann made some counterargument backed up with actual math. But tonight Newt pressed on past this and said, disagree if you like, Hermann, but after all, if you think about it on that scale, we’ll still be together.

“Is that comforting?” Hermann said.

“I think it is,” Newt said.

“You _would_ take wild speculation on astrophysics and bend it into some romantic comfort,” Hermann said, his tone chastising but his eyes fond.

Newt rolled his eyes. “Laugh all you want,” he said. “I know higher dimensions are real. As real as the multiverse.”

“How is that?” said Hermann.

“We could never see them or conceptualize them, I know, with our feeble human minds. But we can feel the shape of them, the same way you feel the sound of a loved one’s voice. You couldn’t describe that sound, or picture it in images, but even though it's a sound, you feel that it _has_ a shape on some unattainable plane. It has a shape that you know.”

“Don’t be fanciful, Newton...” Hermann said softly.

Sitting by the kitchen window, Hermann thought about how the tree would probably not even be half-grown before he died. That was all right. Maybe when it reached a hundred feet it would begin to be noticed, and baffle dendrologists; maybe it would die and never be noticed. That was all right too. Maybe it would become petrified and baffle future archaeologists. Maybe it would be discovered by a plucky archaeologist who would make it their life’s work to fit it into the record.

Hermann knew he would not even see a sprout for a while. That was all right. He was patient.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Big shoutout to Dr. Mary Malone, love of my life, whose spot I absolutely blew up with this story. I did have some reservations when I first started writing, because she is one of my favorite characters of all time. Her time with the mulefa was always my favorite part of those books, and one of my favorite parts of any books, ever. But in the end, it took both Newt and Hermann together to solve what she solved alone. So maybe I mean it as a compliment? Mary, you’re brilliant, and I adore you.  
> \- That said, I changed a lot about her journey (especially towards the end) and did my best to gloss over the main mythos of HDM. So if you haven’t read them in a while, or ever, I strongly, strongly urge you to. They are so unimaginably beautiful.  
> \- The characterization in this fic owes a lot to [DCWT](https://drive.google.com/open?id=1qutucKgRE15FeTQUT2O28RszpcI7doil), which probably goes without saying, because what is all N/H fanfic but fanficfic of DCWT? It’s CWR’s world and we’re just living in it.  
> \- I Ching translations taken from [this book](http://www.labirintoermetico.com/09iching/Yan_Li_The_Illustrated_Book_Of_Changes_\(I_Ching\).pdf).  
> \- [You may be interested in learning more about the Cornerstone 2 mission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMM-Newton).  
> \- Not strictly related but I listened to [this album](https://youtu.be/R0cB2Rj3NZA) a lot while writing. Though it doesn’t rly lyrically apply to N/H, it set the mood. if you like gay longing (and you’re here so i know you do) you might dig it.  
> \- Special thanks to my #1 beta reader and drift partner Haley, for all your invaluable help and love and supportive keysmashing throughout ♡  
> \- Fic mix on [8tracks](https://8tracks.com/musabelle42/an-open-window) & [spotify](https://open.spotify.com/user/hallieincandenza42/playlist/071VY8bRljmK9eMOTbWwbp?si=_Bl007QzSnWgwBdEgJTkXw). [Official fic doodle by me](http://teddy-schacht.tumblr.com/post/173250162883/).  
> \- hmu on tumblr [@davidfosterwallaceandgromit](http://davidfosterwallaceandgromit.tumblr.com/)


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